Set Myself on Fire
by dress without sleeves
Summary: Puck and Rachel, from the beginning. It wasn't always slushies and nasty comments in the hallway. // Ten: Someone breaks up, someone makes up, and old habits die hard. Finished!
1. that

**Author's Note:** So, this website did something really fun and erased all my separator marks. Super! Again, citation: A History of Noah Puckerman, Abridged (which can be found on LJ) and Conversations between McKinley High Students were the inspiration for this story. No shame.

Set Myself On Fire

_Rachel was Puck's first kiss._

**one: that**

It wasn't always slushies and nasty comments in the hallways. Lima's small, always has been, and of the already tiny population not even a quarter are Jewish. The local Jewish Community Center isn't much more than the basement of Rabbi Wiseman's house, since on weekdays the temple doubles as the local daycare center. Puck's dad split when he was six, maybe, and Mrs. Puckerman basically figured that if he couldn't have a father that made waffles and played catch in the backyard, well, he'd damn well get one that could save his immortal soul.

The Puckermans spent a lot of time at the Wisemans'.

Anyway, given that Rachel was a Jew through both her birth mother _and_ her two dads, the population of Lima worked pretty hard to make sure that she was cared for by the community; half of them desperately wanted to 'save' her from the lifestyle of her fathers, and the other half figured, hey, a Jew's a Jew. So most Wednesday afternoons and every Shabbat, their parents carpooled. Wednesday was children's hour with the older kids in the community who volunteered to look after them and set a good, Jewish example, which basically meant that Donny Marks and Rebecca Sexton went into Donny's shed and smoked weed while the kids watched TV and drank caffeine-free Coke.

The Shabbat bored the crap out of Puck, who was required to sit still for _more than twenty minutes_ and couldn't even bring his Gameboy, which he thought was _total_ BS because it's not like he was listening _anyway._ But Wednesdays were all right, especially after Donny and Rebecca left because it meant that he had the run of the house.

Rachel was his first friend in Lima, but mostly what that meant was that she followed him around and carefully advised him not to touch things while he mostly ignored her. (It was a recurring theme in their relationship.) He took to moving things around in the house—just little things that no one would notice at first. He spent one day rearranging the kitchen, putting the plates where the wine glasses were supposed to go and the utensils in with the napkins.

Rachel, tight-lipped, sat on the counter, swinging her heels against the wood. When he asked for a hand, she turned her nose into the air and announced haughtily, "_No_, I will _not_ to help you. This is a juvenile prank and _I_ am not a _hoodlum_, like _you._"

Puck, having no idea what the words 'juvenile' and 'hoodlum' meant, chose to take them as compliments. He rolled his eyes. "You just don't want to get in trouble with your boyfriend Donny."

Rachel kicked a foot out at him as he passed and he nearly dropped a stack of plates. "He is not my _boyfriend_," she muttered with a scowl.

"You wish he was," Puck replied, making a disgusted face. "You've got his name written on your notebooks."

Rachel squealed, dropping off the counter and storming back into the TV room with her arms crossed over her chest. Puck sighed. He hated when she got all angry, 'cause it meant she'd tell her Dads and they'd tell her Mom and then he'd have to _apologize_ in front of everybody.

He followed her back to the TV room and took the empty seat beside her. She didn't turn to look at him, but kept her eyes pinned to the TV like it was coolest thing ever. "Hey, look, sorry," he said half-heartedly. "Really."

Her eyes cut to him and she frowned. "You don't sound very sincere, Noah. My Dads say an apology isn't an apology if it doesn't come from the heart."

"Well, I said it, didn't I?"

Rachel sighed, but Puck knew that she accepted his apology because when Donny came in and demanded to know who'd messed up his kitchen, she just shrugged and said she didn't know, she'd been busy watching Rugrats.

.x.

In fifth grade they were put on the same rotation so some days they were together from 8:00am to 7:00pm, and Puck's Mom or Rachel's Dads would drive them to McDonalds or Arby's or something for dinner. Rachel's Dads were the ones who first started calling him Puck, after Rachel told them about his pranks at the Marks's place. Puck figured it was because his last name was Puckerman, but Rachel shook her head disparagingly at him over their shared plate of French fries and slapped a hand to her forehead.

"_No_, stupid, 'Puck' is the name of a famous character in Shakespearean literature. He's a mischief-causing sprite who casts spells on people to make them do silly things and plays practical jokes all the time."

He frowned, reaching for the salt. They'd done this so many times that it was a science; on Rachel's side of the plate was a huge goop of ketchup; on his, salt-and-pepper dip. "How can a can of soda pull a prank?"

Rachel giggled into her hand, the way she always did when she was trying not to let him know that she was making fun of him. "Not Sprite, _a_ sprite. It's like … a fairy."

Puck gasped in horror. No _way_ did she just call him a fairy! Fairies were like … small, and girly, and stuff. His little sister had a fairy doll and it wore a _dress_ and had _pink wings,_ and Puck wouldn't _ever _have wings that were _pink._ Blue, _maybe_, if they didn't have any awesome black ones. With fire on the tips. And red strips. And razorblades on the end, so he could kick bad-guy butt. "I wouldn't be a _fairy_," Puck told her sullenly. "I'd be, like … a ninja. Or a pirate. Or a dragon. Or a dude with a big sword. That was on fire. And shot lasers out of the tip."

Rachel frowned dubiously. "Why would you want to be a pirate? They're just degenerate thieves who died young of scurvy or other diseases due to poor hygiene and spent their lives stealing the money from decent, hardworking sailors. Not to mention that nasty 'plank' business."

Puck blinked at her. "I missed about half of what you just said," he said honestly. "I was thinking about my awesome laser beam sword/light saber/parachute. That's on fire."

"How can a sword also be a parachute?"

"'Cause it's magic."

"But if it's on fire, wouldn't it burn up and leave you plummeting to your demise?"

"Didn't you hear me? _It's magic._"

"So it's like a magic wand?"

"It. is. a. _sword._ Swords are _way_ cooler than wands."

.x.

"But…"

Her Dads usually interrupted before things got too violent, and drove Puck home with the promise to see him next Wednesday. On his doorstep, they told his mother in low tones about Puck now being a _puck_, and somehow she thought it was so funny that she started using it herself.

The name made her smile, so even though he was definitely _not_ some lame fairy, he let her use it, and after a while it just sort of stuck.

.x.

That year they both turned eleven. Puck's birthday was ten days after Rachel's, and their parents developed the annoying habit of combining their parties into one event, so that among the adults it was Puck's-and-Rachel's birthday coming up, what were _you_ bringing?

Anyway, since it was in June they always had a pool party, and that year Jenny Ward kissed Michael Katz in her kitchen when they were getting sodas, and it was all anybody talked about. Puck, never one to be upstaged on _his own birthday_, loudly and confidently told anybody who would listen that kissing was _no_ big deal, _he_ did it all the time.

When Susannah Leonard looked at him skeptically and asked, "Oh yeah? Who are _you_ kissing?" he drew a blank and then blurted out, "Uhhh…Rachel?"

The parents rounded everyone up for cake and presents right after, so Puck took his chance to slip away and find Rachel, sitting at the piano in her wet swimsuit and plucking out some lame song that didn't even have words. He sat down awkwardly next to her and pushed a few keys. "So, um, I did something," he said uncomfortably, scratching the back of his head.

Rachel sighed. "Did you pee on my Dads' hydrangeas again? Because I thought we'd debunked the rumor about urine helping flowers grow."

Puck shook his head. "No, I, ummm… Itoldeveryonethatwe'dkissedokaygladyouaren'tmadthere'scakeinthekitchen."

He fled.

Rachel came in several minutes later, frowning pensively, and carefully didn't look at him while they opened their presents. She neither confirmed nor denied the rumors that she and Puck were _boyfriend and girlfriend_, and when everyone left she very graciously thanked them for attending Puck's-and-Rachel's birthday this year.

Afterwards, Puck found her sitting on the stairs with her chin in her hands. He sat next to her and tied and untied his shoes, waiting for her to yell at him. Instead, to his surprise, she nudged his shoulder with hers and asked quietly, "Well, do you want to?"

He looked at her. "Want to what?"

She rolled her eyes. "_Kiss_, stupid. I mean, we have to get our first ones out of the way some time, right? And since everyone already thinks we did, we might as well. It just makes sense. And anyway, that way it won't be a lie, so…"

Puck shifted. He still thought that girls were pretty weird, and Rachel the weirdest, but she was also pretty cool sometimes and he figured, why not? She didn't suck _all_ the time. So he said, "Sure," and leaned in. Their noses bumped and their teeth clacked kind of painfully, and it took them several tries to get close enough to actually just _do it_, and overall Puck felt like the experience wasn't all that Michael Katz made it out to be.

But it was _great_ in the retelling.


	2. girl

**Author's Note:** Umm. Don't hate me?

_Summary:_ Puck just wants to be secret friends, and Rachel just wants him to choke on his own vomit.

Set Myself on Fire

_Highschool's fun, until you're in it._

**two: girl**

Puck and Finn became best friends halfway through eighth grade, when Finn transferred into the McKinley Middle School from a school just outside of Lima. The first day of seventh grade he walked in with a black eye, and when Puck asked him what happened, he got this big dopey grin on his face and said, "Oh, it was _awesome._ I was helping my mom's boyfriend water our lawn when I tripped over the hose and hit it on a rock."

Puck frowned. "How d'you trip over a hose if you're using it?"

Completely straight-faced, the kid had answered, "Oh, right, sorry. I was dancing."

That's when Puck figured that this guy was going to need someone to help him survive McKinley Middle, 'cause otherwise the eighth graders were gonna kick his _butt_ during gym, and the Stone kid threw a mean dodgeball. Puck hadn't made many friends in the Middle; all the other kids had Dads and didn't spend every Wednesday at their Rabbi's, and Puck wasn't very good at flying under the radar; he figured this gangly, dopey new kid might be his one chance at fitting in.

So when Joshua Balde asked how he hurt his eye, Puck interjected quickly, "He got in a _fistfight._ That's why he came here; he got _expelled_ from his old school."

Finn frowned. "What? No, I—"

"—don't want to have to kick anyone _here's_ butt, I know," Puck said, waggling his eyebrows meaningfully at Joshua. By lunch the rumor had gotten a foothold, and by the weekend Finn was the coolest kid in the Middle. Puck knew that since the kid had about as much bite to him as a bunny rabbit without teeth the air of badassness wouldn't last long, but it would be a start.

When Finn asked why Sally Jordan kept blinking really quickly at him, Puck laughed and threw his arm around his shoulders. "Don't worry, Finn. Stick with me, and you'll have more than just Sally blinking at you."

On Saturday, Rachel came home with him and his mom after the Shabbat and stayed through dinner. She went to the local private school, which meant they didn't see each other at school, so Puck mostly lied to her about his life. He liked the way she hung on his every word when he talked about getting into fights and playing pranks on teachers.

Of course, afterwards she always rolled her eyes and scolded him sharply and called him an idiot fairy-boy, but he knew she liked listening to him because she didn't interrupt when he talked, and Rachel _always_ interrupted. It was just like how she had a conversation. She only needed about a three-word response before she could start interrupting you with a new reply to the handful of syllables you'd managed to spit out.

But when Puck told her about his best friend, Finn Hudson, who'd gotten expelled from his old school for fighting, she cut him off before he could even go into details and started talking instead about her new singing teacher, who smelled like cough medicine. When he tried again, she interrupted him with a shrill voice as she said, "_Yes,_ I _understand_, Puck, he's another sinkhole of immoral behavior that you should be _intelligent enough_ to walk away from, but since you are obviously still _infantile_ when it comes to social interactions, I suppose I overestimated your maturity. And I'm sorry for speaking with such candor but it had to be articulated."

Puck knew Rachel was mad because she was using words that went far beyond what anyone's vocabulary should be if they hadn't turned_ eighty_ yet. "What're you so angry about?" he demanded.

"_Nothing!"_ she shrieked at him, pushing herself off of his couch and pointing a finger in his face. "Why don't you ask _Finn Hudson!"_

Then she stormed out into his backyard and aimed a vicious kick at his mother's rosebush.

.x.

That summer, his Mom started dating a Jew in one of the neighboring counties, so he got left at the Berrys' house a lot. Rachel eventually forgave him for whatever she'd been angry about, but whenever he brought up Finn she talked over him like he'd never spoken. Puck figured she was afraid of Finn or something, so after a while he just stopped bringing him up.

They didn't really do anything when he was shipped off to her house; mostly they watched TV and played board games, and Rachel always got mad at him for cheating.

"Hey, look," Puck announced, feigning surprise, "I must have accidentally pushed this extra 100-dollar-bill under the board. Wow, that's lucky."

Rachel rolled her eyes. "Oh, yeah. I'm _positive_ that was just luck. You know, ultimately cheating only hurts you, Puck."

"Cheating? I don't know what you're talking about. You're just mad 'cause I'm better at this game than you are."

"That's not true!"

"Is too. You never win and you can't stand it 'cause you win at everything else."

"The two are not mutually exclusive. It's only logical that since I get better grades than you do and have a thirty-year plan and am just naturally more talented in most areas I should be able to outsmart you at Monopoly, which is itself a game of strategy and skill. The only explanation is that you are somehow unfairly manipulating the game."

Puck said, "…Yeah, well…your _face_ is unfairly manipulating the game."

"If you can't formulate a proper response, that further proves—"

"You can't prove it."

"If this game reflects the future, you're going to end up in jail by the age of twenty!" (He'd spend his first night in jail at the age of sixteen.)

"If this game reflects the future, you're going to be a thimble that's too little for anybody's fingers!"

"You're such a jerk!"

"Well, _you're_ such a _girl_!"

She hit him furiously with a cushion, and he threw a pillow at her, so she ran up to her room and slammed the door and wouldn't come out for dinner when her Dads called.

.x.

Puck guessed he didn't _totally_ hate spending time with Rachel; she was pretty annoying, and talked all the time, and listened to music that had songs called, like, _Genie in a Bottle_ and _Hit Me, Baby, One More Time_, which didn't make much sense to Puck because a) you're _obviously_ not a genie if you're making CDs, and b) no one actually _wants_ to get hit, but sometimes she said things that made him laugh so hard that he started choking, and very occasionally she let him pull pranks on her Dads.

Still, he figured it would probably be best for his reputation if they just stayed friends _outside_ of school, like during the summers and at the JCC and stuff. The problem was that Rachel had no sense of _place_; sometimes you had to be one thing, with certain people, and other times, you had to be another. Like at home, he cleaned his room and watched _Schindler's List_ with his Mom, and took care of Sarah even though she annoyed him; but at school, he started fights with kids that were bigger than he was, made fun of Sally Jordan for being fat, and talked back to teachers to make the other kids laugh. And at Rachel's, he was just … you know, like … himself. And she was just Rachel all the time, loud and _always singing_, and voicing her opinion on absolutely _everything_, 'cause seriously, she had deep thoughts on basically everything in the world.

(And really, _who cared_ whether frozen Snickers were better than regular Snickers? They only sold frozen at the local pool, so it didn't make a difference which one she preferred.)

The problem was that he couldn't tell _Rachel_ about his brilliant plan to hide her from his friends, so he just had to maneuver their time together so that it never became an issue. Like when she wanted to go to the pool, he'd pretend to feel sick. Or when she wanted her Dads to take them to the park, he'd say that parks were for babies and Noah Puckerman was _not_ a baby.

But you can't stop time, and on June 26th Puck's-and-Rachel's birthday rolled around, and no amount of pleading with his mother could get her to end the age-old tradition of the combined party. They'd only invited mutual friends for the past couple of years, but since Rachel now went to her fancy private school and Puck, well, was Puck, they only had about three people in common that they knew. (And in Puck's opinion, they were really just Rachel's friends that he saw sometimes at the JCC/Rabbi Wiseman's basement that didn't _completely_ make him want to tear his own eyes out.)

It was no big deal, their parents figured. They'd just have a bit of a mix this year.

Puck valiantly tried to keep his friends from talking to Rachel beyond the introduction; Finn in particular seemed to want to listen to her play that stupid piano. But Puck distracted them all with his Playstation and put a sign on the door that said _no girls allowed._ Rachel usually ignored signs like that, but he figured he might get lucky and she'd be stuck playing piano all night.

Of course, they weren't eleven anymore, and pretty soon the guys wanted some, well, _girls_ at this party, so they could play games like Spin-the-Bottle and Seven Minutes in Heaven (and by Heaven, they obviously meant Puck's closet that sort of smelled like shoes). So even though he tried not to let it, inevitably the parties began to mix, and soon they were all sitting in a big circle on his floor.

Puck stayed quiet at first, and tried not to let _any_ side of himself show, so that no one would have an excuse to call him out, but pretty soon he couldn't _not_ make fun of Jacob Sexton for having to kiss Louise "Porky" Pratt, and he couldn't _not_ grin like an idiot when he got seven heavenly minutes with the new girl, Quinn Fabray. (They didn't actually do anything, 'cause she wouldn't let him, but they agreed to a quick kiss on the lips and she said she'd let him put his hand up her shirt, as long as he swore not to tell.)

When they came out, Rachel loudly announced that this game was juvenile and _clearly_ fed into their uncontrollable young hormones, and _she_, for one, was _not_ going to enable this type of behavior.

"Chill out," Matt Rutherford said, rolling his eyes before turning to look at Puck. "Dude, who _is_ this girl, anyway?"

Rachel climbed to her feet and stares imperiously down at him. "I'm Rachel Berry, his best friend."

Everyone turned to look at Puck, and Finn said, bewilderedly, "Hey, I thought _I _was your best friend."

And Puck's like, oh, _crap._ This must have been how Clark Kent felt when people started figuring out that he was Superman. Did he stay with his lame Clark Kent friends, like Jimmy Olsen, or hang out with his cool Superman friends like Batman and Spiderman?

Puck's Lois Lane pretty much decided it for him, when she looped her arm through his. "Um, I think I know my boyfriend a _little_ better than you," Quinn said, with her nose in the air in a mirror of Rachel's. (Quinn did it better.) "And his best friend is Finn Hudson, _not_ some weirdo in Mary-Janes."

Rachel turned to look at him, her eyes all bright and looking like she was about to _cry_ or something, Puck felt a little bad about it, but … he'd just gotten a _girlfriend_, just like _that_. And Quinn was _pretty._ Like, really, _really_ pretty, where Rachel had kind of a big mouth and knobby knees and yelled at him all the time.

He heard himself say, "Yeah, freakazoid, _Finn_'s my best friend."

Rachel's jaw dropped and her hands curled into little fists and she spun away from them, running downstairs without turning around. Puck watched her go, and then sat down with the rest of the group and continued playing.

Superman would've done the same thing, he was pretty sure.

.x.

Later, when everyone was gone, he found Rachel sitting miserably at his piano, pretending to play even though the lid was closed. He sat down next to her and they didn't say anything for a moment. Then he asked, "D'you wanna play Heart and Soul?"

It was the only song he knew on the piano, and Rachel had made him learn it so that when their parents demanded a performance, he didn't have an excuse not to join in.

"No," she said, folding her arms across her chest. "I don't want to talk to you."

He sighed. "Come on, Rach. I'm sorry."

She sniffed, brushing a tear away from her face. "No, you're not," she said, still not looking at him. "You'd do it again a million times."

"Well… I mean… yeah. But you're my friend, too. It's just that… they're, like… _cooler_, you know? And hey, I was thinking that since they don't like you maybe we could just be, like, _secret_ friends. You know? It'll be awesome. Like we're spies or something."

She was staring at him with a slack jaw that hardened into a scowl. With more force than she'd ever used before, she shoved him off of the piano chair and then glowered down at him. "Now you listen to me, _Noah Puckerman._ You're the most abysmal, ill-bred, _pathetic_ boy that I _know_, and I don't want _anything _to do with you!"

Puck scrambled to his feet. "Well, fine!" he shouted, and shoved her back. "I don't want to be your friend, either! And you know something else? I _never_ liked you! We weren't _ever_ friends, and never _will _be!" He paused, and then added nastily, "_And_ you'll never be a famous Broadday star!"

He felt the slap before it registered what was happening. "It's Broad_way_, you ignorant Neanderthal!" Rachel shrieked, and then was gone, sobbing loudly.

It was the last time Noah Puckerman ever saw her cry.


	3. makes

**Author's Note:** So, yeah. I just can't seem to stop writing this story. And the later chapters are getting… sort of out of hand with their dirtiness.

I choose to blame Mark Salling and not my clearly disturbed mind.

Set Myself on Fire

_Let the Slushy War commence._

**three: makes**

Freshman year was kind of okay. Puck and Finn tried out for the football team and made it on the first day, 'cause Finn had the freak arm of God and Punk could tackle just about anybody if he's angry enough (and he's usually angry enough). Being on the football team meant that they were cool enough to talk to the cheerleaders (who wore their uniforms _all. the. time._ and called themselves Cheerios, which Puck thought was retarded, because, seriously? Breakfast cereal? _Not_ intimidating) and the best part was, they got invited to the upperclassmen parties.

Finn was usually piss drunk by his third beer, but Puck was better at holding it, and by November he'd put his hand up three different shirts and got promised a blowjob by a sophomore. It didn't ever happen, but Puck figured it was close enough to pretend it had.

Quinn didn't stay his girlfriend for long; after she made the Cheerios, she got it into her head that she should be dating the QB. Since the starting QB was a senior who got a full scholarship to Ohio State, she set her sights on Finn. Puck minded a little, because he actually kind of liked Quinn—he liked the way she pretended to be this stuck-up little princess but actually held her alcohol better than Finn and stole her Dad's car to drive without a license.

He didn't miss Rachel. Much. Either way, it didn't matter, because he'd decided she was a freak anyway, and he'd rather lick his own foot than talk to her again.

Puck lost his virginity his freshman year to a senior who was drunk enough not to care about things like age laws. It was her birthday party; he got an invite because he was on the football team and face time because her recently-ex-boyfriend spends the whole night wrapped around one of the girls from the dance team.

Her name was Julia, and she was pretty hot. Puck had no idea what he was doing and spent the whole time trying not to show that he was so _terrified_ that his hands were shaking, but he doubted she would even remember the morning after, so it didn't really matter.

He went into the bathroom immediately after and threw up, and for a minute the only person he wanted to talk to was—yeah, okay, he'll admit it—Rachel, because she'd probably scold him and call him a Neanderthal, but then she'd sigh and say, _Well, what is done is done, Puck, so you might as well get over it._

Except she'd use bigger words.

He took a minute to get his shit together, and then went back outside, lounged on the couch, and drank more than he'd ever had before, and when Mike Chang asked what happened with Julie, Puck shrugged, said, "I never fuck and tell," and then sniffed his fingers.

They didn't smell like anything but soap, because he spent fifteen minutes scrubbing them clean.

.x.

Rachel transferred to McKinley High School for freshman year. The private academy she'd attended for her primary education hadn't continued on to high school, and her Dads weren't sure they could afford tuition for the vastly expensive Lima Academy for Girls.

Her first day, she realized she was in the same homeroom as Noah Puckerman, but didn't speak to him. She wasn't interested in anything that Neanderthal had to say. Well, maybe she would have been, but she gleaned from the way that he wholly ignored her presence that he was still not suitably confident to risk being friends with someone whom his classmates perceived as "uncool".

Within three periods of her interlude at McKinley High, Rachel understood that the encroaching four years would not be ones of happy sleepovers and vast popularity. She spent forty-five minutes in gym being hammered with ruthless dodge balls, and afterward, in the girls' changing room, Quinn Fabray asked casually, "Aren't you that girl from Puck's birthday party this summer?"

Rachel looked for an escape route, but most unfortunately all exist were blocked by girls in red uniforms. She sighed as she buttoned up her skirt. "Yes," she answered in a dull voice. "My name is Rachel, Rachel Berry."

Quinn shrugged. "I didn't ask for your name," she said with a quirk of her eyebrow. "I just want to make it clear to you who's friends with who around here, since you're obviously easily confused."

Rachel tried to defend herself, but Quinn talked over her. "_I_ am Quinn Fabray, soon-to-be the youngest Captain of the Cheerios _ever,_ as soon a Eleanor Farley graduates at the end of this year. _These_ are my best friends, Santana and Brittany. _I _am dating Finn Hudson, future starting QB, and Puck is _off limits_ unless given express permission by me—something that you, I might add, have _zero_ chance of getting. So give up now, okay?"

Rachel cast around for something biting and intelligent that would shut Quinn Fabray right up, but the only thing she could manage was, "I'm not sure that P … I mean, _Noah_ would appreciate you dictating his life without his knowledge or previous consent."

Quinn just offered a terrifying smile and replied, "Well, why don't we just see about that?" which Rachel sensed was more of a threat than a genuine interest in inquiry.

.x.

Right before Christmas break, he and the guys were sitting at lunch when Jeremy Fisher came up to Puck and handed him an orange Slushy. Puck and Finn shared a look and Puck said, "Uh… thanks?"

"Hudson. Puckerman. Come with me, and bring the drink."

Wordlessly, they obeyed, following him into the boys' lockerroom where the rest of the football team was waiting, wearing their helmets. "Okay, boys," Fisher said. "You've been chosen from your grade as the future of McKinley's football legacy" (_of losing_? Puck thought) "and as such, will now be officially inducted into the team."

There was handshakes and laughter, but when Puck brought the Slushy to his mouth to drink, Fisher stopped him. "No! That is your last test. Hudson, Gordon has yours."

Finn frowned. "Uhh… what are we supposed to do if not drink them?"

Fisher grinned.

.x.

Rachel saw them coming, with their slushies in hand, and carefully avoided Puck's eyes. (She wouldn't call him Puck again; she hated that _her_ nickname had been taken and bastardized by these high school thugs who could do little more than perpetuate decades of ignorance and, to borrow a word from the jerk himself, assholery.) In hindsight, that decision was both a blessing and a curse, because it meant that she didn't get corn syrup in her eyes, but she also didn't see it coming.

.x.

They argued on the way down the hall. Finn thought throwing a slushy at someone was sort of mean, but Puck figured that they did a ton of other mean stuff, why did this one matter? Finn didn't have an answer to that.

Plus, Puck reasoned with him, once they cemented their positions on the football team, they could do whatever they wanted and get away with it, even be nice to the freaks. (Puck admitted that he probably wouldn't do that, but it made Finn feel better, so…)

He wasn't sure who he would choose as his victim; Puck wasn't exactly crazy about the idea of dumping an ice-cold slushy on somebody he didn't even know, but high school was high school and everyone had to do things they didn't want to.

Then he saw Rachel, standing in front of her locker with her arms folded over her books and her brown hair falling over one shoulder.

"Oh, hey," Finn said, pointing at her, "isn't that the girl that Quinn said cornered her in the locker room and made her cry? She was at your birthday party last year, wasn't she?"

Given how easily Finn believed people, particularly people who looked good in short skirts, Puck wasn't really sure how he'd ever survived without Puck to look out for him. He was fairly confident that Rachel Berry didn't have it in her to intentionally make _anybody_ cry, much less someone like Quinn Fabray. Still, he just shrugged and said, "What? Oh. Yeah. She was there."

"Well, I guess I sort of have to get back at her for making Quinn cry, anyway," Finn reasoned, and before Puck could say anything he turned a hard left, closed his eyes, and threw the slushy on Rachel's face.

For a moment, everything got really still, as Rachel gasped and froze with cold. Puck panicked. He was torn between getting the _fuck_ out of there before she looked up and saw him standing with Finn and standing his ground to show her that he didn't care.

What he did instead was grab a horrified Finn's empty slushy cup and replace it with his full one. He figured that if anyone was going to slushy Rachel, it was going to be _him._ She was—she was, like, _his_. And besides, the idea that she would look up and see him just _standing_ there, innocently, seemed… weak, and Noah Puckerman was _not weak._

His Dad had been weak, and run away when things got tough, and Puck wasn't about to follow _that_ example. Besides, his mother always told him to take responsibility for his actions, and Puck figured that he as good as slushied Rachel, because he knew it was coming and did nothing to stop it.

She looked up, wiping corn syrup from her eyes. "OhmyGod," Finn breathed. "I am _so_—"

"—sorry," Puck interrupted, but twisted his face into a sneer. "I must have tripped."

"You're a pathetic excuse for a human being, Noah Puckerman," she said, before spinning on a heel and walking to the girls' room.

Finn turned to him. "Thanks for taking the heat, man," he said gratefully. "I don't think I'm cut out for this kind of thing."

"Yeah," Puck heard himself say. "Yeah, it's okay. Just leave it to me."

.x.

Rachel started bringing a change of clothes to school, after that. Her Dads thought she was compulsive about laundry, but she never told them about Puck and the slushies. She wasn't sure why he had developed a special hatred for her, but she wasn't about to show him that it affected her. She would just have to grow up to be an award-winning actress/singer/dancer and when she received her first Tony or Emmy or Grammy or Oscar she would just say, "Well, I owe it all to Noah Puckerman, who tormented me all throughout high school and made me determined to be better than he could ever dream of being. What did you say? Where is he now? Oh, he's a Lima loser, running some sort of lawn business back in Ohio. What was that? Oh, you're too funny—but you're right, he _did _have it coming!"

That Shabbat, her Dads invited the Puckermans over for dinner. She and Puck didn't talk throughout dinner and afterwards, when they had to clean dishes together, she spent the whole time interacting with Sarah.

When they were finished, Sarah begged Puck for a piggyback ride, and he said, "Fine, but that means you have to eat all my broccoli for a week."

At the door, Rachel asked quietly, "Why slushies?"

He turned to face her. "What?"

"Why slushies?" she repeated. "Why not soda, or lemonade, or—I don't know, beer?"

Puck shrugged. "Why not?"

.x.

The next week, Rabbi Wiseman asked them to take over for Donny and Rebecca, who were going off to college. Would they mind maybe watching a few of the Jewish kids for a couple hours every Wednesday or so?

Puck tried to say no, but his mother said yes before he got a chance, so that Wednesday he got dropped off at Rachel's and sat in the kitchen watching football while she entertained the kids with board games and songs on the piano.

Once they'd all become absorbed in Spongebob Squarepants or some shit, she came into the kitchen for a drink. They stood looking at each other for a long time, her warily eying the soda in his hands and him focusing on her annoyingly drooped socks.

"Look," she said at last, "while it has come to my understanding that you are clearly little more than a social pawn who positively _excretes_ pack mentality, it seems to me that the only viable option here is for us to draw a temporary truce here on Wednesdays, so that they're bearable for both of us."

He shrugged. "Sure," he said. "Whatever."

Rachel nodded. "Okay. I am glad that we can come to this mutual beneficial agreement."

Puck rolled his eyes. "You use so many _words_," he muttered, stirring his soda with his finger. "Like, seriously, more than half of those were unnecessary."

"You were able to understand me, weren't you?"

"Yeah, but—"

"Then I don't see why you find it relevant to criticize the way I speak. Just because I prefer to articulate my thoughts in a mature, well-thought-out manner, I—"

"There you go again!" he interrupted, gritting his teeth. "_That's _what I'm talking about! We get it already, you're smart!"

Rachel folded her arms across her chest. "Obviously not _that_ smart," she said bitterly. "I was unintelligent enough to be friends with _you._" Then she spun on her heel and left him there.

.x.

What developed after worked pretty well. School didn't change; Puck still slushied her at least once a week and she continued not having friends and being generally unbearable. But on Wednesdays, they mutually agreed not to speak to one another unless it was absolutely necessary, and when it was, they were civil.

Puck figured it was probably harder for Rachel not to talk than it was for him, because she _never shut up_ in real life and he was becoming more and more of a functional mute. Puck just wasn't all that good at verbal insults; he had a few quick one-liners that stung pretty good, but other than that he was more of a smirk-on-the-sidelines kind of guy. He liked the air of mystery that it created around him.

Anyway, Puck had always been a bit of an asshole, he just didn't need words to do it. Why say _you're a little shit_ when you can lock someone in a porter john?

It was far more dramatic, in Puck's opinion.

.x.

Sometimes Rachel's Dads asked about Puck, and when they did she just shrugged and said neutrally, "He's doing quite well within his own social circles."

"You used to have such a crush on him," her Daddy laughed, shaking his head.

Rachel responded flatly, "I also used to enjoy disco music."

.x.

The August before their sophomore year, Rachel sang the lead in the musical for the JCC. They used the high school's stage and Puck made a point to look bored the whole time, just to prove how much he didn't care about her. Afterwards, his mother made him give Rachel flowers and spent, seriously, like an _hour _talking about how _amazing_ she was, and how she should give Puck a few singing lessons, because he'd gotten really good on the guitar.

"Not _that_ good," he said quickly.

"I'm sure you are very talented, Noah," Rachel told him formally, and then smiled at his mom (suck up). "Thank you so much for the flowers, Mrs. Puckerman. They're beautiful. I'll put them in water as soon as I get home."

Because she was still under the impression that they were friends, his Mom offered Puck up as a sacrifice and told the Rabbi he'd help clean up. So he sullenly stacked some chairs and flirted with Olivia Shoham while Rachel swept off the stage and hung up costumes.

They were all outside, waiting for their parents to come back and pick them up, when Jacob Sexton lit a cigarette and offered them out. Puck took one, because why not, but Rachel said that she couldn't smoke because it decimated one's vocal chords and she couldn't be the youngest director of a Broadway musical if she sounded like an eighty-year-old woman with strep throat.

"Wow, does gayness, like, _run_ in your family?" Jacob retorted.

Rachel frowned. "I don't know what you mean," she answered. "Homosexuality isn't something that you can catch, or that can be passed down genetically. It's—"

"I'm just saying," Jacob interrupted, "_I_ wouldn't want to be alone with them. What if one of them wanted to put his hands on me or something?" Rachel didn't say anything fast enough, so he continued, "I'll bet that's why you've never had a boyfriend, Berry; even if your general freakishness didn't scare them away, your Dads probably molested them when they came over."

Puck put out his cigarette.

.x.

Rachel had never really been able to defend herself, especially not against accusations that were untrue; she didn't understand how people could come up with nasty things to say just because they wanted to hurt someone else's feelings, so she'd never mastered the art of the rejoinder.

There were several she could have chosen on this particular occasion, she realized later; she could have pointed out that her fathers, nor anyone _else_ for that matter, wouldn't go within six _miles_ of someone as scrawny and unattractive as Jacob; she could have noted that he was just jealous, being as _everyone_ knew Susannah Borgin had refused to have sex with him; and could have even gone with the classic 'you're still upset over your parents divorce, aren't you?'

But she couldn't think of any of those at the time, so she stood staring stupidly as Jacob and Olivia laughed, and then a lot of things happened at once.

Puck dropped his cigarette on the ground and put it out with his foot; then, almost calmly, he brought his fist back and knocked it into Jacob's face so hard that the boy fell over. Olivia screamed and jumped back, her hands covering her mouth, as Puck lifted Jacob up by his collar and slammed him against the wall. "Shut the fuck up, asshole," he snarled. "No self-respecting human _being_, gay _or_ straight, would want to put his hands on that peanut dick of yours."

With a last forceful shove, he pushed away from Jacob and jammed his hands into his pockets. He didn't look at Rachel as he passed her, but she fell into step beside him as his Mom pulled up.

They didn't talk in the car, but his mom made him walk her to the door, and as she unlocked it, pressed a quick hand to his arm and murmured, "Thanks."

"This doesn't mean we're friends, or that I like you or anything," he told her flatly. "Don't get any of that girly shit in your head, because you're still a freak, and I'm still going to slushy the shit out of you on Monday."

Rachel shrugged. "Okay," she said, and then went inside.


	4. me

**Author's Note:** Umm? I have no excuses.

Also, a lot of you wanted a link to A Brief History of Noah Puckerman, Abridged, so here it is: the m0rgue . livejournal . com / 71996 . html #cutid1. Just remove the spaces. Enjoy!

Set Myself on Fire

_Noah Puckerman versus Glee._

**four: me**

Puck joined Glee because he was chasing cougars, because his mom thought he didn't have enough extracurriculars, and because Rachel told him that he had no ambition.

Reverting back to an eleven year old, he had muttered, "Your _face_ doesn't have any ambition."

Like I said. Not great on the verbal insults.

Still, he sort of came to like it, even if he vehemently denied that fact to anyone who asked. And just to make sure everyone understood that he was _only_ doing this for _sex with cougars_, he took to becoming _very_ vocal about the things he did after he finished cleaning pools. Probably to no one's great surprise, the guys on the football team loved it in direct proportion to how much the girls hated it.

But he … sort of didn't mind the Glee kids, after a while; like Kurt, for example, for all his gooey eyes he shot at Finn and the way he sort of shivered when Puck took of his shirt in the locker room, had this way of like cutting through all the bullshit. He was a little bitch, mostly, but it was _hilarious._

And Artie could _shred_ on the guitar, even from his wheelchair. Sometimes after practice, they'd all stay afterward and Artie would rock the bass while he played guitar and Finn jammed on the drums.

When Rachel stormed out to be Miss Number One, he'd said, "That Rachel chick makes me want to set myself on fire," but on Wednesday he told her flatly, "You're kind of being a little bitch."

She folded her arms across her chest. "I do not know to what you are referring," she said, and Puck shrugged.

"Well, whatever," he shrugged. "I guess you don't really want to have friends, after all."

When she rejoined, she said it was because of Finn, and because she hated being in the play. "Okay," he said.

"I mean it," she told him, "I in no way, shape, or form considered your input upon deciding to rejoin Glee."

"Got it."

"No, Noah, I am being completely serious. Don't go thinking that just because you had a rare moment of intellectuality that means that I was bamboozled into quitting _Cabaret_. I only did it because Finn told me he missed me, and I believe that he does, because even though Quinn is pregnant and I know that he won't break up with her, it's important to me that I support him, and Quinn as well, even though I think she's deeply evil."

"Yep," Puck said curtly. "Noted."

She hesitated. "I just want to be clear—"

"Oh my God, Rachel, _shut up._"

.x.

After Halo/Walking on Sunshine, Rachel was literally bouncing off the walls. She couldn't keep her eyes on one thing for more than like, four seconds, and Puck was in _no way_ going to deal with that shit.

But then Quinn came up to him and was all, "Umm, she's totally freaking out, and I need you to do something about it," and he'd heard that upsetting a pregnant woman could make her accidentally miscarry the baby, so he sighed and was like, fine. Just this _once._

Rachel was scary on a good day, but all cracked out on Nyquil she was like a tiny version of the Incredible Hulk, and Puck kept his distance. "Yeah, you need to calm down," he said, in the most soothing voice he could manage.

"_Noah!_" she shrieked, literally _leaping_ at him and—holy _shit_ what the _fuck _was she—

…hugging him?

"Did you see our mash-up did you like it I thought it went pretty well although I messed up a little bit in the intro hahaha the world needs angels what was I thinking although in retrospect, yeah, the world totally does need angels, like if we had angels flying around everywhere we definitely wouldn't have war or people like Quinn although Quinn's gotten less and less horrible lately because she's well you know, pregnant and all and I think she realizes that we're the only nice people in this school except for the kids in Chess club who are like weirdly nice _all the time_ and one of them said that I had a beautiful voice which shows that at the very least they recognize talent when they see it and speaking of talent you did really well in your mash-up I mean I know you weren't the star or anything because you just don't have Finn's vocal range but you definitely had energy and you look really good in a leather jacket not that I ever think you look good well okay sometimes I do but mostly I don't look at you I look at Finn but a lot of the time I see him looking at Quinn so _then_ I look at you and you have a stupid haircut but kind of pull it off anyway I don't know anyone else that could rock that dumb haircut but you've had it since we were kids so I guess I'm just used to it, do you remember when we were both really little and we were like best friends for a while and you were my first kiss did you know that and I know that I was yours, oh yeah, I remember now we talked about it it was at Puck's-and-Rachel's birthday party hahaha do you remember those because they were fun for a while I wonder what they would be like now probably not all that great because you'd invite all your cool football and Cheerio friends and I'd invite the Glee kids who I guess are my friends? and it would be super awkward but maybe we could have alcohol because I heard that alcohol makes every situation less awkward although I don't want to develop a dependency on that because I don't want to become like April Rhodes was she isn't going anywhere if she can't get herself off her alcoholism but I guess I could understand I mean if my talent got me no where I'd just totally lose it I'm so terrified all the time that I'm not going to get anywhere in life even though I have all this talent, but Puck a lot of people have talent and it doesn't help them, seriously, I mean _April Rhodes_ she was like the best singer I've ever heard and she's just some creepy old lady who had to come back to high school to steal the spotlight, I mean, that's just crazy you know, speaking of knowing, did you realize that when we were kids I just had the biggest crush on you it was so hilarious, I got so mad when you became best friends with Finn because that's when I knew that you weren't going to by _my_ best friend anymore even though you were for a long time, even after I stopped being yours, because even though I know you never actually liked me all that much you always put up with me and understood me sort of and knew what to say even though a lot of the time you were annoying and kind of mean, I miss calling you Puck 'cause _I started_ _it_ well my Dads started it but that doesn't count."

She took a deep breath, panting, and Puck just sort of stared at her. "Um, okay," he said. "Cool?"

"Do you miss me?"

He didn't look at her, because she was the scariest thing he'd ever seen and she'd used up his entire word bank for the rest of the year. He felt tired just listening to her. "Let me get you to the nurse," he said, instead of answering.

She jabbered the whole way down the hall, and as soon as they reached Mrs. Schuester's office he realized that, on second thought, this was actually the _last_ place he wanted to bring Rachel in this condition, so he brought her out to his truck and helped her in the side and let her sit there, bouncing on her hands because he made her promise not to touch anything.

"I like your car it's very you my car's very me I have a Prius."

"Neat," he said, and turned on the radio.

That was a mistake. Soon she was singing along with _every song_, even though she _definitely_ didn't know the words to a lot of them, and so instead just lalala'd which drove him absolutely nuts, so he switched it off and without missing a beat she went right back into talking a thousand miles a minute.

"Rachel," he begged, "Seriously. Please. Stop. Talking."

There was a note of hysteria in her voice when she answered. "Hahaha I want to but I can't like really if I don't say it out loud the thoughts just go around and around and around and around and around in my brain and I don't know what to do with them does that ever happen to you because you don't talk much."

He tried not to laugh, and checked his reflection in the rearview. "I don't think much," he said. "Are you hungry? Maybe we should get you something to eat."

"Yeah maybe I should eat Quinn said that too maybe Quinn should eat because she's pregnant and babies need food people need food too I wouldn't hate a snack, maybe a donut?"

Puck put the car in drive. They definitely were _not_ getting her more sugar. He drove her to the 7-11 and demanded that she stay in the car; he locked her in, just in case, and went inside to buy a loaf of bread. He wasn't sure what made him choose a loaf, but it didn't seem too sugary, and he figured it was fluffy enough that he could shove a bunch in her mouth and it would shut her up without choking her.

Pretty much a win-win.

When he came back outside she'd climbed out of the window and gotten on top of the car, where for some unexplainable reason she'd decided was the best place for a nap, so he threw the bread into the back seat and climbed into the bed of his truck so he could ease her down without waking her up.

As it turned out, a siren in her ear couldn't have woken her up, so he settled her in the backseat of his truck and drove back to school. He had math, but he put the loaf of bread on the armrest, along with his keys and a note that said, _lock it when you get out._

.x.

Rachel woke up wrapped in a blanket that smelled so _distinctly_ of Noah Puckerman that for a moment she thought it was his arm.

When she realized where she was, and vaguely recalled what had happened, she sat up so quickly that she got woozy, and had to lean out of the car door to vomit. Horrified, she moved the car a few parking spaces over, so he wouldn't see.

She ate the whole loaf of bread.

.x.

A week later, his family was watching _Schindler's List_ when his Mom said tearfully, "You're no better than them, Noah. Why can't you date a Jewish girl?"

That night, he had the strangest dream. He knew it was a dream because there was no way Rachel could have climbed up the outside wall with no shoes on. (The other reason was because, due to _Schindler's List_, Sarah had asked to sleep in his room so that the Nazis couldn't get her, and Puck was a lot of things, but definitely _not_ low enough to have hot Jew sex with his sister in the _same bed._)

When he woke up, he knew that it had been more than a dream. It was a message from God. Rachel was a hot Jew, and the Good Lord wanted him to get into her pants.

The next morning, he stood in front of the slushy machine for like twenty minutes before he decided which flavor he wanted. He knew Rachel's favorite because when they were eight she'd made him play house with her and make peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for her dolls. She'd only let him use Welch's grape because she didn't like any other berries.

Plus, one time he'd thrown a slushy at her and she'd licked her lips before going to the bathroom to wipe it off. He hadn't been willing to admit at the time that it was sort of sexy, in that weird Rachel way, but… yeah. It totally had been.

.x.

"I picked it up for you this morning when I was buying dip," Puck said, handing her the Big Quench, and her first thought had been, "What were you buying dip for?" before she realized that he meant, like, tobacco.

She hadn't realized he'd become so dependent on any substance, but that certainly would have to change if he had any serious ambition when it came to glee.

When the next words out of his mouth were, "So, I was wondering if you wanted to work with me on some mash-up ideas?" she knew that something was up. Nobody thought that girls who puked out of the side of their cars were cute. _Nobody._

Still, she figured that fostering a new friendship with him couldn't be _that_ disastrous; she learned her lesson the first time, and she just wouldn't let herself repeat it. After all, Rachel was a grown woman now, and anyway, since she had such strong feelings for Finn, whatever happened with Puck would just be, well … for fun.

They could just have fun, couldn't they?

When he arrived at her door that night, he had his guitar case in hand and looked extremely uncomfortable; her Dads greeted him with such enthusiasm that she thought he might have brought them some sort of baked goody from his mother.

Rachel wasn't an idiot. She was fully aware what he'd come for, and more than that, she wasn't about to let him off the hook for being a complete jerk. So she made him play What A Girl Wants, even though Christina had ceased to impress her starting with her _Dirrty_ album (although, like everyone else with a uterus, she had a soft spot for "Beautiful".)

"So… wanna make out?"

They could just have fun, Rachel told herself. This wouldn't hurt at all.

.x.

Of course, _then_ he had to go and do something completely … _Noah_, pre-high-school, and serenade her with Sweet Caroline. When they were kids, he used to get her to stop being mad at him by turning on her Dads' old Neil Diamond CDs and letting her make him dance to them; when he started grinning, she knew that he was remembering the time that they accidentally overturned her couch and weren't strong enough to right it again. They'd had to wait for her Dads to get home, and in the meantime made a fort out of the upturned furniture.

So afterwards, she pushed him into one of the bathrooms, put her hands on her hips, and said, "Look. I know exactly what you're doing, Noah Puckerman, and I just want you to know that even though I don't appreciate being used for whatever your ulterior motive is, I'll do it, because, well, we were friends once and it's clear to me that you're desperate."

She expected him to argue but he just shrugged and said, "'Kay. Cool."

He hesitated. "…Wanna make out?"

.x.

Later, when she was washing the slushy out of his hair, he thought about all the times he'd done it to her and felt … like … _guilty._

His apology was more words than he liked to use in a week, and even though he was sort of sarcastic when he said that he might burst into tears, he was also sort of not. Because Rachel Berry was made of soft marshmallow-y insides, and even though he'd slushied her in the face for years and been generally cruel, she was here shampooing his head and telling him that it was all okay.

When she kissed him on the forehead and left him there, Puck's only thought was: _shit._

.x.

Let's just be clear on something:

Puck went to football first. He was getting ready in the locker room and everyone was glaring at the clock and muttering about gays and music and how he'd _better_ stick around, and he just got sort of annoyed with it all. "Hey, guys," he said after a minute, "fuck you." He figured he _would_ have chosen football over glee if he hadn't been _made _to, but since Coach Dickwad got all bitchy on him, he'd get bitchy right back.

He wasn't in love with Rachel. He wasn't even really sure that he liked her, like, as a person, because she was still annoying as hell and never shut up, _ever_, and called him _Noah_. But… when she looked up at him and was breathing sort of nervously and said, "You know this means you might get a slushy in the face every day," he wasn't just acting when he said, "Bring it."

Puck might have been the asshole that knocked up his girlfriend, but Finn was an idiot.

.x.

"We weren't friends to begin with," Puck said, pushing away from the bleachers, and Rachel dropped her head into her hands, because yes, they _had been, _way before any of this adolescent hormonal nonsense had started. And while it's true that she that still had feelings for Finn, and it's obvious that Puck had feelings for Quinn, she …

Well, she _missed_ him, sometimes. She missed the way that he used to pull those pranks and put salt-and-pepper on his French fries, even though that was disgusting.

When Finn brought slushies to glee, a part of her didn't want to forgive him right away, but he did that thing where he grinned with just one side of his mouth and she couldn't help herself. She expected Puck to make some asshole comment while they toasted, but instead he hesitated, then quirked his lips and clinked his cup against (just) hers.

He didn't say anything about it, but as they were leaving he caught up with her, jammed his hands into his pockets, and said, "We can be friends, I guess," before dropping back to walk with Kurt and Artie.

Rachel smiled. "Okay," she said, to herself.


	5. want

**Author's Notes:** I feel like mentioning _Spring Awakening_ is cheating, but I did it because ... well, because it's about sex, and I felt like Puck could really relate to that.

(WhatNOthelulzhadnothingtodowithit!)

Set Myself on Fire

_Your car is very you my car is very me I have a Prius._

**five: want**

Mid-December, his truck broke down. Puck didn't have proof, but he suspected it was because Sarah had taken setting up forts in the back seat and messing with all the controls.

His Mom had to work, and couldn't shuttle him to and from school, so his _awesome_ two options were the bus and Finn, and Finn was the worst driver Puck had seriously _ever met._ It had something to do with a mailman, a story that Quinn never fully told him but in passing, so he opted to wait outside the local Episcopalian church with the freshman and catch the bus every morning.

Once or twice a few of the kids tried to talk to him, but he took care of that with a well placed Puckerman Glare of Death.

Of course, the problem with taking the bus was that it left promptly at 3:30, when school ended, so he didn't have a ride home. His Mom could pick him up every day but Tuesdays and Thursdays, so he took to mooching off Matt and Mike (Finn offered, but Puck wasn't suicidal). It was a pretty decent system, all told.

Until the inevitable day that both Matt _and _Mike had dates, and Puck was left pretty much fucked.

He was ten seconds from signing his life away to Finn's driving when Rachel said, "I can drive you, Puck. I go by your house on my way home, anyway, which means that my giving you a ride is more fuel-efficient than Finn giving you a ride, and actually more than you having your truck yourself—although, of course, your truck is a gas-guzzling ozone-destroyer so …" She trailed off and cleared her throat. "Well. Anyway. Do you want a ride or not?"

Puck shrugged. He'd never seen Rachel drive, and he already knew she had to be better than Finn, so. Finn frowned at him as he collected his bags, probably imagining scenarios in which Puck and Rachel in prolonged proximity led to the death of one or both of them.

Puck had to fold his legs and it cross-legged, because Rachel's tiny Prius didn't have nearly enough leg room, with the surprising and alarming amount of crap that she stored in there.

"Dude," Puck said, carefully tucking his foot underneath his knee, "I've seen your room. You are a neat _freak._ What the hell is with this car?"

Rachel blushed, straightening her rearview as if that would somehow make the vehicle seem tidier. "Well, to be fair, I was not previously alerted that I would have company this afternoon, or I would have cleaned."

"_My_ car isn't even this messy!"

"All right, admittedly, at the present juncture the vehicle is a _little_ untidy."

"A _little_? Berry, am even I sitting on an actual seat, or just a pile of CDs?"

"I like to sing in the car in the mornings to warm up my vocal chords."

"Yeah, well, _I l_ike having sex, but _my_ car isn't a sea of condoms, now is it? And _why_ do you have a box of Q-Tips in here?"

"Dirty ears are disgusting, and indicate a basic lack of hygienic attentiveness."

"…Do you often look at yourself while you're driving and think, 'Oh, God, my _ears_ are dirty today'?"

"Well, you never know if—"

"And is that a _laundry bag?_ What would you need a…" he trailed off. "Oh." Rachel shifted uncomfortably and Puck cleared his throat, scratching the back of his head.

Awkward.

Into the silence, Rachel reached over to turn the radio on. After a couple of bars of Celine Dion, Puck turned it off. "Look, about the slushies," he started.

"I don't care about the slushies," Rachel interrupted. Puck frowned doubtfully, 'cause seriously, he's had the shit dumped on him and he'd be pretty pissed.

He waited for her to continue, but she didn't; instead, she visibly reined herself in and frantically started tapping the foot that wasn't on the pedal. He didn't think it was healthy for a person to hold themselves back like that, especially since Rachel was actually getting _red_ around the cheeks, and—

"But you were _such an asshole_, Noah Puckerman!" Her voice was so forceful that he actually leaned a little away from her. "It would have been far more effortless for you to simply ignore me, since once we reached high school you seemingly transfigured into this extra-terrestrial life-form that I could no longer call a friend, but it's like you deliberately wanted me to be miserable and I do not understand what made you abhor me so _vehemently_, particularly since we'd been friends!" She broke off, breathing heavily, and then daintily brushed her hair out of her face. "I'm sorry. I guess that has been brewing for a while."

Puck had always been able to gauge how angry she was by the length of her words, so he crafted his answer carefully. An angry Rachel was a terrifying Rachel, and he was never sure just what form her revenge would come in. "I don't…" he hesitated. "I don't really know why I hated you especially. I guess you just … bugged me."

When she answered, her voice was tight and controlled. "What, specifically?"

"Berry…"

"_What specifically?"_

He sighed. There was basically no way to say no to Rachel Berry once she got something in her head. "You talk too much, and about stupid stuff that nobody cares about. Sometimes it's cute, and usually it's not. You're way full of yourself, and I can say that 'cause I am too so I know what it looks like. You have unfair expectations of people, and when they aren't what you think they should be you make them feel like crap. And you can't ever let anybody else win. You're like an angry yapping poodle-doberman mix that mothers use to scare their kids into eating vegetables."

There was a long pause. Then, "I see," she said, nodding once. "So I bugged you. And now?"

He shrugged. "And now you don't," he said.

They drove the rest of the way in silence.

.x.

On the next Wednesday, she offered an olive branch. They were sitting in the kitchen while the kids from the JCC watched TV in the living room when she said, "I could help you with your vocals, if you wanted."

He looked up from his phone. He didn't really care one way or the other about working on his vocals, but he figured that saying no would have some sort of deeper meaning or something and she'd never speak to him again and/or kill him in his sleep. "Sure," he said. "If you want."

"Okay," she said, nodding. "Good. We can start after glee tomorrow. I'll drive you home after. I mean, if that's okay."

"Yeah, that's okay." They both very carefully looked everywhere but at each other, and the amount of _holy awkward _in the kitchen was enough to scare Puck into actually going into the living room and asking if any of the boys wanted to toss a football around.

Inside, Rachel played the piano.

.x.

On Thursday morning, she approached him with a couple pages of sheet music. "Here," she said. "I put some notes on it. This is what we'll be working on today. If you … if any of it's illegible, I'd be happy to explain it."

He took the music and shoved it into his backpack. "Thanks."

He took it out during his free period and flipped through it; it was some show tune (shock, surprise) from something called _Spring Awakening._ He wasn't sure what was so exciting about a story about the spring, but, hey, what did he know.

After glee, he loitered around the piano and fiddled on his guitar while Rachel helped Mr. Schue clean up. Since Rachel was Mr. Schue's favorite person in the world, after Finn (who was most people's favorite person, maybe even Puck's, with the exception of his mother and his sister, who he had to love because they were family, and his unborn baby, because it was _his_) he gave her the keys to the rehearsal room and told them to lock up afterwards.

"So, um, did you get a chance to look at the music?" Rachel asked carefully. "If you didn't, I completely understand, and we can go over it now."

He frowned. A Rachel who understood laziness and not putting music above breathing, eating, _and_ sex? Did someone like that _exist_? "Uh, no… no, I looked at it. I don't really get it though."

"Have you seen _Spring Awakening_?" Puck didn't bother to answer, just looked at her for a minute until she laughed. "Okay. That was stupid question. Well, you should, you'd really like it. It's about sex. Not that, um…"

Puck smirked at her as he dug through his backpack to find the music she'd given him. Her eyes got big and wide when he pulled it out, crumpled and folded, but she didn't say anything. "Not that sex is all I think about?" He asked, cocking an eyebrow. "Come on, Berry. You know me better than that. I also think about food."

She grinned, reaching out to smack his shoulder as she rounded the piano. "Well, I thought it would get your attention. All right, from the top."

.x.

Two weeks later, Rachel slammed the piano closed and said, "Okay, this isn't working."

Puck frowned. "I didn't think it was _that_ bad," he said defensively.

She shook her head. "No. It was. You hit the notes, but you didn't put anything _into_ it."

Puck raised his eyebrows and folded his arms across his chest. "What did you _want_ me to put into it? I was singing, wasn't I?"

Rachel sighed exasperatedly and grabbed his hand, dragging him out of McKinley and into the parking lot. "_Yes_, but that's not the _point_. You have to … to _feel _it." She opened her car door and shifted through the five gazillion CDs she's got stashed in there until she found the one she was looking for and shoved it into the CD player.

The music started, familiar and soft, and Puck leaned against her car as he lit a cigarette and then crossed his arms over his chest. Rachel closed her eyes and swayed with the music, humming along. "Don't you hear it?" she asked, leaning breathlessly against the car. "The—the _longing_? It's like… it's like they have this… this _secret_… and it just builds and builds and _builds _between them…"

Puck raised his eyebrows. "Just so we're clear, they've _already had sex_, right?"

Rachel frowned, opening her eyes to look at him. "Well—yes."

He shrugged. "So what's the big deal? They had sex. End of story. No big secret, just like … a little secret."

Rachel joined him in leaning against the car and tipped her head back to look up at the sky. "No, it's big, because it's so… _forbidden._"

Puck snorted. "Not _that_ forbidden. You said there was a lot of sex in this thing," he pointed out.

"Yes, but … you just … you just have to _see _it."

She turned to look at him, her eyes lit with that terrifying light of having made a decision, and Puck tried to head her off at the pass by bringing his hands into the air but she'd already made up her mind. "Meet me at my house Friday night."

Puck shook his head. "Friday? No way. I've got a pool to clean."

Rachel put a hand on his arm. "You can clean it another time."

"I don't think—"

"Will you just _trust_ me?" she cried, exasperated. "You'll _like it._"

Puck doubted very much that he would like some musical better than he would having sex with María Marquez, but Rachel had her jaw set in that way she had, so he sighed. "Fine," he snapped, "but you had better have cookies or some shit that'll make this worth my time."

Rachel grinned, sticking out a hand. "Deal."

.x.

That's when shit started to get a little crazy.

He showed up on Friday expecting to waste away a perfectly good night, but Rachel answered the door in jeans—_jeans!_—and a black sweater, and she was holding a plate of steaming, _gooey_ peanut butter cookies.

He took one. "I think I saw a porno like this once. Mm, peanut butter, my favorite," he said, thought it sounded more like _mmf ffrrd_ around the melting treat in his mouth.

Rachel closed the door behind him and laughed. "Mine too. Now come on. I've got the video Dads made me when we went to see it last year. We were in the front row. It's not DVD quality or anything, but …" she shrugged.

They sat side-by-side on the couch as it started, and, okay, Puck had to admit it. Besides the weird gay part in the middle, it wasn't that bad. And anyway, they said words like _bitch_ and talked about sex a lot, and there was a pretty soft-core scene with the main girl, Wendy or Wilma or whatever, that had him kind of uncomfortable, but Rachel was like, _so into it_ that she didn't notice.

When it was over, they both sat in silence. The plate of cookies was empty on the coffee table and Puck had crumbs _all_ over him, and after a minute Rachel took a deep breath and asked in a breathless sort of whisper, "_Now_ do you understand?" She turned to look at him, and she was smiling but there were tears in her eyes (which wasn't a surprised; no one should be able to pull off sad joy, but Rachel's always been a master of mixed emotion). "They love each other, only they don't know how," she said swatting at her eyes. "No one ever _showed_ them how."

It was the voice that got him, that airy _pant_ she had when she got excited, and he stood up and grabbed his coat. "Yeah," he said, choked. "Yeah, I get it. I'll see you Monday."

What happened after, no matter what it looked like, was _not_ Puck fleeing before he totally lost his shit. It was just a … fast-paced, strategically timed exit.

.x.

Puck had a crazy dream that night. He knew it was a dream because there was no way he could have teleported from his bed to Rachel's; he was pretty sure that if he had some sort of badass super power like that, he'd have _known_ it and used it to get _tons_ of ass.

Anyway, what happened in the dream was he realized suddenly that he was in Rachel's bed, only it wasn't Rachel, it was that Wendy girl, only a Wendy that _looked_ like Rachel.

The point was, she was wearing that itty-bitty little nightgown and those high-ass grey socks.

Except when Puck dragged her against him and tried to kiss her, he realized that he had absolutely no idea what to do, because no one had ever told him about sex before and all he knew was that he wanted to do _something_ with Rachel/Wendla that would make her _his_.

(Upon waking, Puck acknowledged that sex was definitely _not_ the route to go if that had been his endgame. He's not looking to be Wheezy, with all those rugrats running around.)

.x.

Rachel stared down at the empty plate of cookies on her coffee table.

She wondered what Finn's favorite kind of cookies was.


	6. to

**Author's Notes:** Can I just say… I love Kurt?

Also, thank you all so much for all your incredible reviews… if I could reply to them all I would, but I'm just so overwhelmed by the sheer amount of support that I have no words!

Set Myself on Fire

_Speak words, Noah Puckerman._

**six: to**

Rachel clung to Finn more than usual on Monday, even with Quinn's hate glares that could burn holes through cement. They were singing 'For Good' from Wicked for Sectionals, and the closer it got the crazier Rachel became.

Watching her sing gave Puck this sort of sick feeling in his stomach, for reasons he chose not to explore, so instead he spent his time generally being an asshole to anyone who was brave enough to get close enough for him to strike.

At football the next day, Kurt marched over and said, "All right, diva, what's got _you_ all shook up?"

Puck glared at him. "Leave me alone, Beyoncé."

But Kurt, in his usual fashion, just took a seat next to Puck on the bleachers and told him cheerfully, "If you really wanted me to leave, you wouldn't compare me to my idol and soul sister. So let's talk about what's got your panties all in a bunch and then you can go back to being just a regular ass and not a supersized one."

Puck didn't answer. Fuck Kurt, anyway.

"Come on, Tall Dark and Handsome. You need my help."

When he still said nothing, there was a soft touch on his shoulder. He looked up; Kurt was eyeing him balefully. "God, you are just _the_ least romantic boy," he said with a sigh. "You like her. Say it with me."

"I don't want to talk about this."

Kurt rolled his eyes. "Well, fine. But a small piece of advice? Speak words_, _Puckerman. Silent and brooding is cute from a distance, but up close it's just one hot mess."

.x.

Rachel didn't understand. Finn was … perfect, in nearly every way; he was sweet, and had a good heart, and didn't _want_ to hurt anybody, although sometimes he did anyway. And even though it was obvious that he had feelings for her, Rachel, he stayed with Quinn because he was the father of her baby. He was everything a high school girl could want: kind, popular, attractive.

When they sang together, he'd sometimes get this look on his face, and had so much _want_ in it that it nearly took her breath away. And even if that was partly just acting, Rachel had waited her whole life to see a face like that.

But… well, he just wasn't very smart.

Oh, not that Rachel necessarily held his education against him; McKinley was only okay on the best of days. Finn had _school_ smarts just fine; he was an honor roll student and Rachel was confident he could get into plenty of decent colleges. But he didn't have… well. She hesitated to say 'street' smarts, because that implied gangs and survival and all sorts of unsavory notions, but for lack of a better term…

Finn was _blindingly_ naïve. He saw _only_ the best in people, and everyone loved him for it. He was like a six-week-old puppy, running around and just wanting to play with everyone and be loved.

Rachel was far more pragmatic. She realized that in order to accomplish her goals, she would have to step on a few toes; she would do what it took to get where she wanted to go. She had always been that way, and she always _would_ be. In fact, underneath her coats of sheen and Mary-Janes, she was… rather more like Puck, in that way. They both knew what they wanted and stopped at nothing to get it.

Of course, in her case that was fame and immortality, and Puck's case it was … well, who ever knew what he wanted?

.x.

That Wednesday, Puck showed up late and with Sarah literally hanging off his arm. "OHMYGOD HI," the girl greeted, dropping off of Puck to hurl herself at Rachel. Alarmed, Rachel looked over at Puck, who rolled his eyes.

"Mom forgot to lock the candy drawer," he sighed. "Yo, spazmatron, let the hostage go."

Sarah shouted her laughter and ran back to Puck, climbing up him like he was a jungle gym until she was rested on his shoulders. "LOOK I'M A THOUSAND FEET TALL!"

"Just about," Puck agreed dully, then looked hopefully at her. "I don't suppose you've got any tranquilizers?"

Rachel frowned doubtfully. "Well… we have Advil PM in the kitchen, but I'm not sure that's—"

"—Perfect," he interrupted, brushing past her and setting Sarah on the counter. She bounced on her hands and talked nonstop as he rummaged through the drawer. "SO THEN JAMIE WAS LIKE OMIGOD I LOVE TURKEY SANDWICHES TOO AND BRETT WAS ALL YOU WANT HALF AND THEN THEY SWITCHED HALVES OF SANDWICHES WHICH WAS FUNNY BECAUSE THEY WERE _BOTH TURKEY SANDWICHES!"_

"That's hilarious," Puck muttered unenthusiastically. "Berry? A little help here?" Wordlessly, Rachel reached into the medicine drawer and handed him the box of Advil PM. Even _her_ ears were hurting, and Rachel had a fairly high tolerance for sound. Puck tore into it and pulled out two pills; then he poured Sarah a glass of water and handed them to her.

"WHAT ARE THESE FOR?"

"They're listening devices. They'll tell you funny jokes. You just swallow them."

"I'M NOT AN IDIOT _NOAH._"

"Okay, fine. They're going to knock you out so _I_ don't knock you out."

Sarah looked at him thoughtfully and then shrugged. "…OKAY."

She threw them into her mouth and swallowed, and Puck scooped her up into his arms and carried him past Rachel, up the stairs, and to her bedroom. "All right, Rah-Rah, I'm leaving you here. Go to sleep."

"WHAT IF I CAN'T?"

"Then I'll sell you on Ebay." She squealed her laughter as he tossed her lightly on the bed and ruffled her hair. "I'll just be downstairs." Rachel closed the door behind him as he came into the hall, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "Congratulations, Berry, you just saved a life."

She grinned at him. "Yours?"

"No, hers. I was ten seconds from throwing her in front of a bus."

They walked together to the living room, where five Jewish kids were watching Spongebob with a fervor they never showed on Shabbat. She nudged his shoulder with hers. "You know, Noah, despite your dubious habit of drugging your sister, you're actually a decent older brother."

He shrugged. "Yeah, well. Family's family, I guess."

Rachel had a sudden flash of him, at about six. His father had just left, and he was in his tree house. When she tried to hug him, he'd shoved her so hard she'd fallen over; immediately, he'd scrambled to help her up and hugged her in apology. _Let's get married_, he'd said, _then we'll never be alone, not ever._ "Yeah," she murmured.

They were quiet for a second, and then he said, "You remember, like, freshman year? You were in this stupid musical, _Noah's Ark_ or some shit. You could already sing like hell. Anyway, afterward we were all outside and Jacob Sexton made this asshat comment about your dads."

Rachel frowned. She hadn't realized that _he_ would remember. "And you punched him. Yes, I remember."

Puck hesitated. "Well … I just …" he shifted uncomfortably. "I wanted you to know that I'm, like…" he trailed off, gesturing with his hands.

"Sorry?" she supplied.

He sighed, rubbing a hand on the back of his head. "Didn't you ever want to know why I did it?"

She shrugged. "You like my Dads," she said, as though it were obvious. "You always thought they were funny."

"I didn't do it for your dads," Puck said, not meeting her eyes. She stilled, waiting for more, but he just stood up and went outside to smoke, and she didn't follow him.

.x.

Later, when everyone was leaving, Rachel went upstairs to check on Sarah. She was still knocked out cold, huddled beneath the blankets and snoring like Puck in class. "I guess I could just carry her to the truck," said a voice from behind her.

Rachel shook her head at him, frowning. "No. I won't condone unsafe driving practices on top of irresponsible drug use. If she's going in the car, she'll have to wear her seat belt, and I know you well enough that you won't buckle her in."

She closed her bedroom door and brushed past him downstairs; he followed wordlessly, and for some reason Rachel felt lightheaded. She went to the piano, because that's where Rachel _went_ when she was nervous or stressed or breathing, but Puck put his hand on the lid to prevent her from opening it. She turned and made herself meet his eyes.

.x.

Puck was going to kill Kurt. Seriously. First thing Thursday morning, he was going to hunt that kid's little gay ass down and shove it so far into a porter john that he'd be washing the smell of shit off himself for years.

This whole situation could have been resolved if Puck had just been allowed to punch somebody and remind himself that Rachel Berry was a fucking _freak_ and that he was way too cool to deal with her shit all the time.

The only real conclusion that could be drawn was that Glee was evil, and therefore everyone in it were soul-sucking demons. Soul-sucking demons with magical powers. Magical powers that made people do stupid shit like put their hand on Rachel Berry's piano and say, "You _do_ know me."

She blinked at him, for once not saying anything. Were her batshit crazy rants something that, like, only happened when he desperately wanted her to shut up? Because he really wouldn't hate for her to start blabbing about something—anything—right now, and then maybe they could just forget that he had a moment that can only be interpreted as possession by evil spirit and move on.

But no. She just stood, slowly, and waited for him to finish.

Puck sighed. "Look. I know I'm an asshole, okay. Always have been. Even when we were kids, I mean… I'm just a dick, you know?"

Rachel's eyes got very wide, and she shook her head. "Not…_all_ the time," she said carefully, dropping her eyes. "There's—there's a very sweet side to you, Noah."

He winced. "Please, don't ever say that again," he begged, only sort of kidding.

She hesitated, opening and closing her mouth. Which was the _weirdest fucking thing_, because when did _Rachel_ not say whatever (what._ever._) was on her mind? He waited her out. He was better at staying silent than she was. "Why did … why you hate me so much? I mean… I know that I bugged you, but… I can't have been the _only_ one."

Puck shrugged. "Can't we just chalk it up to me being an ass and call it a day?"

Rachel shook her head, folding her arms across her chest. "No. I want to understand. There must have been _something_ that I did."

"Berry. There wasn't. Just leave it be."

"But that's not _rational_, Noah. I'm sure there was _something_—my looks? Maybe I said something insensitive, or … or was it because of your birthday party, in eighth grade? Was it perhaps my ambition, or—"

Puck lost his patience. He'd never really had much anyway. "Look, if I was mean to you than no one else was! I just—you were just _mine_, okay, like everyone knew that and they left you alone and I'm not saying that I did it to protect _you_, because I did it to protect _me._"

…Yeah, _that_ sounded way more legit in his head.

"What do you mean, protect _you_?" Rachel asked, frowning, because she was seriously the _most clueless person ever._ "Puck, I don't—"

And of course she didn't, because she was so tied up in Finn Hudson that she couldn't se what was right in front of her _face_, and fuck Kurt, because Puck had never been good at words, anyway. And she was annoying him with her talking about going about being rational and how he was clearly not telling her something, and Puck was like, yeah, no _shit._

So he stepped forward and grabbed her face between his hands and said, "Don't think I've been pining after you or anything, because I haven't."

And then he kissed her, partly to shut her up and partly because fuck, he just _wanted to. _She was there, and shit, it was _Rachel_, who he'd proposed to when he was six, and who had to keep a laundry bag in her car because of him, and who really believed herself when she said things like, _I'm going to be famous_, and hell, he half believed her, too.

Rachel, who wore those painfully short little schoolgirl skirts and long socks that made her legs look a thousand feet long and sometimes bit her lip in a way that made him want her to do far, far filthier things with it than just talk.

Which she did. All the _fucking time._ And … and he didn't totally hate listening. I mean, he sort of hated it, but sometimes, when he was in the right mood, it was kind of funny. She never meant to be and usually didn't realize it when she was, but that was… sort of part of its charm.

He kissed her until she kissed back, slowly, tentatively, and then with sudden fervor he hadn't really expected but definitely didn't mind.

After a second, she pulled away, and said breathlessly against his mouth, "I still like Finn."

He dragged his mouth along her throat and murmured, "Why do you always have to make it about feelings?" before kissing her again.

And because she was a psychopath with no rhyme or reason to any of her actions, she dragged him onto the couch and started—holy _fuck_—removing her clothes without even being asked. He ran a hand up her stomach, along the spot on her side where she was ticklish, and was bending his head down when—

"Puck?"

He looked up, and there was _Sarah_, Queen of Bad Timing, standing on the stairs and rubbing her eyes. He swore, and leapt off the couch, swinging her up onto his shoulders before she could focus and get a look at Rachel. "See you at school," he called over his shoulder, and left the house.

.x.

Rachel put her shirt back on, shivering without Puck's body to block the breeze from the fan.

.x.

He didn't act any differently on Thursday; didn't treat her worse, or better, or even like anything had happened. He laughed when she asked what a milkshake was when Mercedes started singing about yards and boys, and bragged to Finn and Matt about upgrades to his truck, now that it was back from the shop.

But she could have sworn he'd raised his voice for her when he said, "Yeah… much more room in the back, now. Just about enough space for two, if they were, say, lying down."

Matt and Finn laughed, and Quinn smacked him lightly upside the head, but his eyes slid over to hers and he winked.

.x.

Puck didn't really expect it to work. Rachel, after all, was about as subtle as an anvil that shot bullets.

Still, when he got out of glee that day she was waiting on the hood of his truck, her legs crossed at the ankles, and when he approached offered him a smile. "I was thinking that we should talk about yesterday," she began, and at his groan she smiled. "But then I realized that you were right. About feelings."

He raised his eyebrows, because, "Dude. That's the first time I've _ever _heard that from a girl."

She shrugged. "I still have romantic notions about Finn, and like it or not you _clearly_ have some sort of attachment to Quinn. But, well, we're both very attractive people who have needs, and… and, hell, Puck, if I'm going to do this sort of thing with somebody, it might as well be you."

He blinked at her, totally frozen. After a minute, he asked, "…What did you just call me?"

She frowned. "I… what?"

"You called me Puck."

.x.

A smile was beginning to grow on his face; it was an expression she rarely saw on him. "Don't be stupid, Noah."

"I'm not. You totally called me Puck."

"No, I—"

But she didn't have time to finish, because he had swept her right off the hood of her car like she was a bag of groceries and was suddenly kissing her so hard that it actually hurt, a little. When he pulled away, and she looked up at him in utter bewilderment, but he just laughed and said, "You totally fantasize about me, too."

She crossed her arms over her chest, but a warm feeling bloomed in her stomach at the way he was looking at her and the way he said _too._ "I do not know what you are talking about," she said. "I told you, I just want—"

"I know what you want," he said, and kissed her again. "Nympho."

"Noah…"

"You call me Puck in your freaky sex dreams, don't you?" he asked cheerfully.

"Only if you call me Rachel."

They glared at each other, and then she tipped onto her toes and snaked an arm around his neck, dragging his mouth down to meet hers. "Didn't you say something about new adjustments in your truck?" she asked, because she was intelligent to know that the only way to change Puck's mind on a subject was to make him forget about it.

He grinned.

.x.

It was never romantic; sometimes it was in the kitchen, on Wednesdays when the kids were in the living room and they had to make sure their voices didn't carry. Sometimes he snuck in through her window just because he could and he thought it was hilarious that her dads didn't know he was there. He never said he had feelings for her; she admitted openly to sometimes pretending he was Finn.

If it was less often that she seemed to suggest, well, Puck had his own charm, too.

Puck didn't whisper things in her ear, like she imagined Finn would; he knew what he was doing and never fumbled or was shy; he was still an ass most of the time who openly shared with her his exploits of the cougar variety.

But he didn't ask anything of her, and that was important.

.x.

She was… not what he expected. A girl like Rachel, he thought would want promises and flowers and candy and shit that Puck was, frankly, just not gay enough to be a part of. As far as he knew, promises were only good for being broken, and he was _definitely_ not shelling out for roses when he had a god-damned _baby_ on the way.

But she didn't ask for any of it. Whatever she was getting out of their royally fucked up relationship, she kept it to herself. Which worked for Puck, because seriously, he didn't do the talking thing. His 'DTR' conversations were short. They went like this:

_What are we? What is this?_

_Nothing, on both counts._

Worked every time.

.x.

"Berry," he begged, covering his ears with his hands, "if you don't make that sound stop I swear to God I am going to kill you."

Rachel sighed. Puck always failed to appreciate her love for Christina Aguilera's early work. "Just let me finish the song," she bartered.

"My _ears_, Berry. They're _bleeding._"

"You let me listen to it before!"

"Umm, yeah, when I was trying to _seduce_ you. But now that I _know_ you want me to rock you like a hurricane, I don't have to."

"Rock me like … you are so crass!"

"Mmm, I love it when you talk dirty."

"Do you have even the smallest ability to behave like a civilized human being?"

"Do you have the ability to _not_ speak like a 1,000 year old man?"

She rolled her eyes. "Neanderthal."

"You know, you've used that so many times against me, I'm starting to think of it as just another pet name."

"I fail to see how a gentleman like Finn puts up with you."

As per usual when she mentioned Finn, Puck didn't answer; instead, he crossed the room in three steps and crushed her mouth with his. "My Dads are home," she hissed, and he grinned.

"Yeah, and you like it, don't you, you freak."

She kissed him instead of responding, because that was really the only way to handle him when he became like this, and when her dads came in and she had to cross her legs at the knee because she wasn't wearing panties, he laughed so hard that he fell off the bed.

Still. She didn't think that her Dads noticed anything, and that was a relief.

When they went downstairs for dinner, he opened the door and let her pass through first.

.x.

After he mastered _Spring Awakening_ (sort of), Puck put his foot down and demanded that they sing something that had never once employed _Playbill. _Rachel had always hated Lynyrd Skynyrd, but Puck taught her 'Simple Man' anyway, and he could tell that she sort of enjoyed it by the way she tried to make it sound like a Broadway musical.

.x.

An hour before Sectionals, Rachel and Kurt came backstage smelling like ass, and at least one of them was crying. (Hint: it wasn't Rachel.)

Her shirt was stained and her makeup smeared, and when she shook her hair out little bits of trash and old banana fell to the floor.

Mr. Schue panicked, asking if they were all right, did they want to go home, and who needed Sectionals, anyway? Kurt and Rachel looked at one another and shook their heads firmly; Rachel's lips were pressed into a tight line that wouldn't let sound through but Kurt said, "No _way_, Mr. Schue, I did _not_ squeeze myself into these tiny pants to go home a _quitter._"

Inexplicably, Brittany, Santana, _and _Quinn had all brought their cheerleading uniforms with them, and between the three of them they found a white shirt and (itty bitty) red skirt that fit. Nobody had anything red for Kurt, but Matt lent him his white wife beater and that made him happy enough.

"Those douches from McArthur are such _assholes_," Finn muttered.

Puck shared a look with Mike and excused himself to use the bathroom.

.x.

Puck and Mike nearly missed their cue; they swept back in just as the McKinley Glee Club was finishing the pre-show huddle and grinned when asked where they had been. "Man, that line was long," Mike said, laughing, and Puck added, "All right, let's pussy up and sing some Broadway."

Mr. Schue frowned at his use of the word 'pussy' as a verb and in no way referencing a cat, as well he should have, but said nothing.

If Rachel said so herself, they were phenomenal. (Well, actually, Brittany was a little pitchy but blended in with the chorus so nobody noticed, and Quinn just couldn't _move_ as quickly as the rest of them, to no one's great surprise, and Artie always did this thing when he was nervous where he blinked too much and forgot to smile. Tina stuttered once. And of course Puck wore an expression the entire time like he was bored out of his mind. Finn sang beautifully, but he was a terrible dancer and there was just no getting around that.)

They sat in the audience and watched the rest of the groups go; McArthur wasn't terrible, although she desperately wanted them to be, in the spirit of her pre-show dumpster dive. But their leading man had a limp he hadn't had before, and Rachel thought she spotted at least one black eye and a bloody lip.

On the bus home, she politely requested to sit next to Puck in the back. When she made him show her his knuckles, she smiled.

"You're bleeding," she said.

"Yeah," he agreed, not looking at her. "I tripped."

"And caught yourself with your fist?"

"Remember what I said, about my badassness?"

She didn't say anything, but laced her fingers with his, and he let her.

.x.

On Monday, Finn came up to her and gave her that wide-eyed-sincere look that still made her heart skip a beat. He had a flower in his hand and winced as he gave it to her.

"I know, I know, it's lame," he said, blushing. "But I just—I mean, isn't that, like, what they do on Broadway? Bring flowers onstage or whatever?"

Rachel looked down, smiling. "Yes. Thank you. That was very thoughtful."

He caught her chin and made her look at him. "Hey, Rachel, I'm … I'm really sorry about the McArthur thing. We still kicked their asses, but… they're just jealous of you, you know? I mean, it's sort of a compliment that they thought you were that much of a threat. I'm a little jealous."

She laughed, imagining Puck's bloody knuckles and the way he'd looked at her when she'd come in from her run-in with McArthur, like he was going to pummel the closest thing he could find and he didn't _care_ if it had at least a hundred pounds on him. "It's okay," she said, and it was. "I don't think they'll be doing it again."

Finn frowned, bewildered. "What? Why not?"

"Are you questioning my badassness?" she asked, and Finn laughed, but he didn't really get it.


	7. set

**Author's Notes:** Don't hate me, please!

Set Myself on Fire

_In retrospect, this was probably a bad idea._

**seven: set**

It was Matt's idea, and in hindsight Puck probably should have known it was going to be a disaster because all of Matt's ideas were disasters. In fact, most of Matt's attempts to do _anything_ outside of football, girls, and glee were disasters; Puck had once seen him take out two old grannies and a stroller when he'd gone through his skateboarder phase, and when they were fourteen he took a job at the Tastee Freeze and accidentally gave food poisoning to half the school. So really, there was some fairly compelling evidence that Matt was an idiot.

But Puck was an idiot, too, and the best defense that he could come up with at the moment was, "Well… it seemed funny at the time."

.x.

Rachel wanted to be Elphaba for McKinley's annual Spirit Week, the lovechild of the Student Council and the Civic Team, where you basically had to pay money to look like an idiot. Festivities included "Dress as your Favorite" Day, where you chose any person, character, or thing and—surprise—dressed like them.

Puck thought it was both fitting and terrifying that Rachel should want to dress like an outcast that was misunderstood for the duration of her schooling and went on to be batshit crazy and turn her boyfriend into a scarecrow.

"_No,_ Noah," she said exasperatedly, kicking him from her position on the couch. "I want to be Elphaba because she was a strong, independent woman who knew what she wanted and went for it. Also, she had much more interesting solos, musically speaking."

He caught her foot with his hand and didn't let it go when she struggled. She rolled her eyes at him and stopped fighting until he got bored enough to let her go. "You just want magical powers," he told her. "Admit it."

Rachel huffed again, crossing her arms over her chest and turning back to the movie they weren't really watching, a re-run of _Friday the 13__th__._ As ten-year-olds, catching it late one night when they'd been bunking at Rachel's because his mom was working late, they'd thought it was the most terrifying movie in the world. Now it just seemed kind of campy, though Puck was willing to admit that the scene where Kevin Bacon had sex in the _same bunk bed_ as a bleeding corpse was highly, _highly_ fucked up.

"She really should have known better than to stand in front of a target," Rachel said cheerfully, tossing a handful of popcorn into her mouth. "I mean, she's practically _asking_ for it."

She was wearing one of her tiny little Catholic schoolgirl skirts and high socks, with a tight little button-down that could only have been bought when she was _twelve._ "She's not the only one," Puck said, reaching across the couch to grab her hand. She looked over at him, startled at the touch and probably under the (_very_) mistaken impression that he wanted to, like, hold hands, or something, but laughed as he dragged her to him.

Though he'd been the one to initiate it, she kissed him first, crawling over him until she straddled his lap and had his face clasped between her hands. "My Dads are going to be home soon," she murmured, mouth impossibly close to his, and he took it again.

She lasted like popcorn and chocolate, and he licked his lips as she pulled away. "Tease," he grumbled, and she laughed.

Slipping off his lap, she got to her feet and straightened her skirt. "Are you hungry? I can make you a sandwich. I haven't eaten since breakfast. I skipped lunch because Quinn wanted to go over her solo for Regionals, which I thought was very responsible on her part, and you know, she's actually getting much better. I think—"

He spun her quickly and kissed her, licking at the corner of her mouth where a drop of chocolate had lodged itself. He didn't want to talk about Quinn, not with Rachel, not with anybody. He didn't even really want to think about the fucked up quadrangle he'd stumbled into. Quinn-Puck-Rachel-Finn…and baby. Did that make it a hexagon?

Whatever. The point was, it was fucked up.

.x.

As he drew back, Rachel shook her head, her eyes still closed. "That's not always going to work, you know," she said, opening her eyes to glare at him.

"What's not?" he asked innocently, prodding her gently into the kitchen. "Gimme extra mayo."

Rachel sighed. "You can't just kiss me every time I bring up something you don't want to talk about."

"Or maybe you bring up things I don't want to talk about because you want me to kiss you."

"_Noah._"

He shrugged, crossing his arms over his chest as she reached for a plate. When she couldn't grab it, he reached over her head and handed one down to her. "It's your own house; you guys should really organize around your height problem."

She tucked under his arm to get to the fridge and tossed a glare at him as she did. "My height is not a _problem_," she said flatly. "I'm five-three. That's four whole inches above the official limit of a little person."

"You researched it, didn't you? You were totally afraid you were a midget."

Rachel landed a punch on his arm and brought out whole grain bread instead of a hamburger bun to punish him. Ever since they were kids, Puck had loved his sandwiches on hotdog buns. He said it had something to do with volume; Rachel suspected it was because he didn't like crust but didn't want to be the lame kid whose mother cut it off for him.

"I did not, and stop avoiding the subject."

"What subject?"

"Noah! I'm serious!" She stamped her foot, struggling with the jar of mayonnaise. He took it from her wordlessly when she held it out in frustration.

"Look, Berry, I don't know why you even give a shit. It's not like we're dating or something."

If the little sting his words brought surprised her, she didn't show it. Instead, she just glared at him, snatching the jar back, and didn't look at him as she said, "That doesn't mean that I don't _care_ about you, you idiot."

When he didn't say anything, she consciously kept her expression neutral. With Puck she found that the best results were gotten if you let him do things at his own pace. He was much slower than most emotionally well-adjusted human beings. She finished making the sandwich in silence, and when she turned to give it to him, his eyes were somehow soft and shuttered at the same time. "Thanks," he said, taking the plate, but when he smiled at her she figured that he wasn't just talking about the sandwich.

She'd have liked him to say it back, but the way he smiled when he bit into the sandwich and washed the dish when he was done was close enough.

.x.

For "Dress As Your Favorite" Day, Puck always went as himself. He figured that was pretty self-explanatory.

Rachel, to nobody's great surprise, got _really into_ her costumes, and she was excitedly explaining her costume (it's origin, her plans to make it her own, her favorite song from Wicked, the date she'd gone to see it, the gum she'd chewed, exact shade of green she was planning on using (sea-grass)) to Tina when Matt said, "Holy crap, guys—_idea_! We should go as each _other_!"

"Or…we could not," Puck said, raising a hand, recalling the Food Poisoning Incident of '07.

"Come on," Matt exclaimed excitedly, getting to his feet, "It'll be _hilarious!_ Tina and Mercedes and Rachel can be the Cheerios, and vice versa … I could be Artie and Kurt could be Mike and Finn could be you!"

Finn shrugged from behind the drums. "I mean, it would be pretty cheap. All I'd have to do would be to shave my head and wear your football uniform."

In tandem, Rachel and Quinn said sharply, "You aren't shaving your head."

Puck rolled his eyes. People are this school just did not _get_ how awesome his hair was.

But he was imagining Mike dressed up like Kurt and Brittany with streaks in her hair, and it _did_ seem kind of funny, so he just shrugged, and when Rachel protested weakly, "But… I was going to be Elphaba," he slung an arm around her shoulder and said, "Do it next year. I'll put out a hit on that Dorothy chick and we'll hunt that bitch _down._"

She rolled her eyes, but didn't argue.

.x.

Because they were closest in height, Rachel wore Quinn's old Cheerios uniform and leant her some of her school clothes. She thought it would be more awkward, as her romantic rival and sometime enemy followed her up the stairs to her room, but the already-showing Quinn was subdued and actually smiled when she sat on the foot of Rachel's bed.

"That's funny," she said, somewhat distractedly. "I have these sheets."

Rachel raised her eyebrows, surprised. "I hadn't imagined that we would have anything in common, particularly tastes in decorating," she said honestly.

Quinn's voice was wry. "Me either."

Rachel chose a looser skirt and a baby-doll top that would hide Quinn's stomach. As she took them, Quinn sucked in a breath and said forcefully, "Thank you."

"You're most welcome."

"I really don't want to like you," Quinn said, meeting Rachel's eyes with a bravery that she wouldn't have expected. "It's obvious that you have your claws into Finn and don't intend to let go, and don't think that I don't notice the way that Puck looks at you when you're having one of your Jewish BFF moments. But you've been… undeniably nice to me, so. Thank you."

Rachel shrugged carefully. The metaphorical jury was still out on Quinn Fabray as a decent human being; Rachel supposed she could sympathize with the way she felt ostracized, although Rachel's own troubles had been by and large the fault of Quinn herself. Still, Rachel had never been one to bear grudges; they took far more energy than they were worth, and it wasn't like she had a lot of friends to choose from.

She fingered the fringe on Quinn's uniform as she took a seat next to her. "You're welcome," she said, more or less sincerely. "And while I won't deny that I am attracted to Finn, I hope you know that he's not going to leave you. He wouldn't do that, not with the baby on the way."

A small shudder passed through Quinn, and her mouth pinched; for a moment, Rachel thought she was going to cry. "Do you…" Quinn hesitated. "Do you think he would have stayed, if there wasn't a baby?"

Rachel shrugged. "I like to think that he wouldn't, but to be honest, I don't know."

Quinn sighed, straightening as she stood. "Yeah, well. Me either." She gave Rachel a sad smile. "Thanks for the costume. See you Monday."

She let herself out.

.x.

They were singing 'Don't Stop Believing' for Regionals, and Mr. Schue had broken it up between them, instead of just giving the verses to Finn and Rachel. Personally, Puck thought they should stick with their strengths and keep him in the background, but arguing with Schuester about glee was kind of gay and didn't get you anywhere, so he just shrugged and let Rachel bully him about his four lines of solo until she thought they were perfect. (Which, by the way, she _never did._)

Since everyone had 'called' everyone else already, Puck was Finn for "Dress As Your Favorite", so they traded football jerseys and that was that.

It actually went kind of well; Matt borrowed Artie's wheelchair and Artie shuffled around on crutches for the day, while Santana's Tina was frighteningly accurate and Brittany (somehow?) managed to sort-of-kind-of pull off Mercedes.

Kurt bitched about having to be Mike, but they mostly ignored him. He dressed as his favorite diva every day of the week, anyway.

Rachel looked weirdly hot in the Cheerios uniform, and Puck sure as hell wasn't the only one who noticed the way Tina sashayed with a little extra something-something in that little skirt.

During practice, Mr. Schue thought they all deserved a break, so he brought in something baked by his terrifying wife and Puck and Mercedes stood in the corner while everyone else played Marry/Boff/Kill.

"I _hate_ this uniform," Mercedes bitched quietly, crossing her arms over her chest.

He looked her over. She'd bought a cheerleading outfit from some Halloween store, since Brittany's wouldn't fit; somehow, it didn't look half bad. He grinned lecherously at her and handed her a cookie from his plate. "Well, it certainly doesn't hate _you."_

She looked over at him with raised eyebrows as she took the offered treat. "Easy, Casanova," she said, but she was laughing. "What are you, like, eternally horny?"

Puck didn't bother to answer, because he felt like the answer was fairly obvious.

.x.

Rachel didn't hate the way the uniform felt. She liked the way it made people look at her—the way it made Finn look at her, and Puck, and even Jacob Israel, like they couldn't quite believe she was her. That's how people _supposed_ to react when you were in costume.

She especially liked the way Puck dragged her into the handicap bathroom between school and glee practice and hoisted her onto the sink, kissing her before she had a chance to protest, and didn't stop until she was breathless and dizzy and had quite forgotten what she was supposed to be protesting.

"Dude," he said when he pulled away, "Berry. You look _hot._"

She smacked his arm and called him a chauvinistic caveman, but she blushed at the compliment and he grinned when he noticed.

At practice, they didn't do much except stand around and eat. A few times they broke into song, depending on what the conversation was, but other than that it was mostly wasted time. Rachel… didn't mind, exactly, though she kept glancing anxiously at the clock and wondering if she should have warmed up her vocals in case Mr. Schue changed his mind and decided to have a real rehearsal.

But he didn't, so she stood around and talked with Kurt about who was prettier, Idina Mendzel or Kristin Chenoweth, and when he suggested that April Rhodes had kind of reminded him of the latter, she frostily told him that his judgment was _clearly_ inhibited by his attachment to the drunken wastrel.

He'd rolled his eyes and said, "Yeah, okay, whatever, Sue Sylvester," which had startled her so badly that she quickly closed her mouth.

Mr. Schue asked her and Finn to stay after to talk about Regionals, so Puck shrugged a goodbye and went, flicking chocolate at Quinn and smiling fondly at her laugh.

Finn watched them go with a frown, which Rachel thought was strange until she realized that she was doing it, too.

.x.

Puck grabbed Quinn's hand as she reached for her keys, but when she looked up at him with a startled glance he let go. He wasn't exactly sure how he was supposed to go about this, because he felt like he was probably supposed to deliver a speech or something, but Puck just wasn't really into all that girly touchy-feely shit, so instead he just shoved a roll of bills at her and tried to walk away.

"What the hell?" Quinn asked, and then called after him with an eye roll in her voice, "What's this for?"

He walked back with a resigned hunch of his shoulders and sighed. "New shoes," he said sarcastically.

"Oh, great," Quinn said. "I've really been wanting a new pair of Uggs. Hey, we could go together. Make a day of it."

He clutched his heart, pretending pain, and the girlish giggle that escaped her made him smile, which was embarrassing enough without having to add, "It's for, uh… you know. Our baby."

She raised her eyebrows. "You mean _my_ baby," she corrected. "Mine and_ Finn's_."

He made it a point not to let the words hurt, because fuck Quinn, anyway. "Sure. Yours and Finn's. As a completely neutral third party, I just wanted to help out."

He tried a second time to leave her there, but her hand shot out and stopped him before he could. "Puck…" she murmured, sighing, and manually turned him to face her again. "Thank you. I shouldn't…" she hesitated. "I shouldn't have called you a Lima loser. You're not. But we both know that Finn is the better option for me."

He had a flash of eighth grade, him and Rachel at the piano. _We could just be secret friends._ He shrugged. "Yeah. I know."

"There's something else," she said slowly. "I didn't want to say anything, in case it… gave you false hope."

He laughed, despite himself, and shook his head fondly at her. "Quinn, you're going to go to the grave swearing that my baby is someone else's. I think that speaks louder than anything you could possibly say to me right now, unless it's, 'Let's get married,' in which case you are looking at the _wrong_ dude. I'm not try'na be Mr. Schue; I just want to take care of my—our—fine, _your_ baby."

Her voice was soft. "I know."

"I don't want to be my dad, Quinn."

It was the most honest he'd ever been with a girl, since things he said to Rachel were filed under "Unexplainable, Do Not Revisit" and didn't count. Quinn hadn't removed her hand from his arm, and when she repeated, "I know," he thought he heard a little tremble.

"I just want you to know," Quinn said, "that when we… did what we did, it wasn't… for the reasons I said. I mean, I _was_ drunk, but…" she pouted a little. "Oh, for heaven's sake, Puck, don't make me _say _it."

He grinned. "I know," he said. "It was because I'm a smokin' hot hunk of burnin' love."

"I was going to go with 'good listener', but sure, if you wanna believe that."

They did that gay thing where they just stood smiling at one another, and then Quinn coughed. "You're a great guy, Puck," she said gently, but she looked troubled as she did it, and leaned up to gently kiss the corner of his mouth. "I'll see you tomorrow, okay?"

He walked her to her car and shoved his hands in his pockets as she drove away.

.x.

Quinn wasn't in school on Friday, and no one heard from her over the weekend. Finn was supposed to send out a bat signal, since he was going to talk to her after school Friday, but it never came, which was why everyone was surprised when he came into homeroom on Monday and laid Puck out with a single blow.

From his position on the floor, Puck thought: well, she could have at least given me some _warning_, I mean, _Jesus._

"Stay the _fuck_ away from me," Finn snarled.

.x.

Rachel heard it between first and second period. Soft whispers that she didn't want to believe but knew better than to ignore.

Whispers like _Quinn_ and _Puck_ and _baby._

Mercedes pulled her aside before third and said, "Oh my _God_, girl, did you _hear_?"

Rachel shook her head, body going numb as Mercedes relayed that holy _shit_ Puck was the father of Quinn's baby, _not_ Finn, that Finn had somehow believed that he could impregnate someone without having sex with them and it's been a lie this whole time.

She told herself that, rationally, this didn't affect her at all. She was hardly Puck's girlfriend, and she had even less a claim on Finn. This shouldn't bother her. This had nothing to do with her. She was going to be fine.

Actually what happened was that she excused herself, ran to the girl's room, and threw up.

.x.

Puck found her in the bleachers during lunch, looking out at the football field with her chin in her hands. He'd gone with the intent of yelling at her, because what the _fuck_, she couldn't have maybe _talked to him_ first?

But instead, he sat down beside her and said, "So, you couldn't do it, huh?" before slipping his hand into hers.

Quinn looked at him with bright, wet eyes, and said, "Oh, _God_," before leaning into him and starting to cry.

.x.

Rachel went home early.

She hadn't seen Puck since homeroom, and Finn was walking around with an expression on his face that kept her from approaching him. She wasn't sure she would have been able to even if he hadn't. Her stomach was roiling, and her hands shook every time she looked at them.

She wasn't sure what she was upset about, whether it be that the lie had destroyed Finn Hudson or that it had destroyed what she thought she'd known about Noah Puckerman, or somewhere in between.

He didn't call her. But then, Rachel wasn't even really sure which boy she was waiting for.

.x.

Puck waited until after dinner to go to Rachel's. He told himself it was because he didn't want his mom to know, but really he just wasn't psyched about going through the trouble of sneaking in through her window just to get yelled at.

Still. He owed it to her, so he went.

She was sitting at her desk, and didn't look up when he slipped in. They stayed that way for a couple of minutes, Puck leaning against her window as she finished typing whatever it was she was working on and then turned slowly to look at him.

"So," she said.

He didn't meet her eyes. "So."

"Well, I'd like to say that I'm surprised with you, Noah, but I can't say that I am. After all, betraying your best friend is sort of like, a habit for you, isn't it?"

He winced, but didn't argue. Didn't really have the right to, after all.

"I think you should leave."

He sighed, rubbing a hand over his face. "Okay," he said, "but can I say something first?" She crossed her arms and looked at him expressionlessly, waiting. "I just… I wanted to say that I'm sorry. I should have… shit. I don't know. I'm just—I'm sorry."

Rachel shrugged. "You know," she said quietly as he let himself out, "I'm really tired of hearing that from you."

.x.

On Thursday Finn called Quinn a whore during glee, and Puck laid him out without thinking about it. He guessed Finn had been itching for a fight all week, and Puck had never been good at taking the high road. "Don't _call her_ that," he snarled as Finn scrambled back to his feet and tackled him; they went down to the soundtrack of the other glee-ers gasping and the clash as his head hit Finn's drums set.

By the time they were pulled apart, Puck had a split lip and Finn's right eye was swollen shut, and between them there they had a dozen bruises. Quinn's hands were soft as she pressed the ice cloth to his lip and ran a thumb along his chin, wiping blood away, and when she kissed him it was with infinite gentleness.

"You don't have to do that," she murmured. "I don't need you to protect me."

Puck rolled his eyes, "Yes you do."

She was sitting on his lap, like Rachel had the day he'd gotten his first slushy facial, and her hand rested on his arm as she said quietly, but firmly, "I'm not in love with you, Puck. You might be—God, this is pathetic—you might be my only friend, but I can't… turn it on like that just because I want to."

It hurt when he laughed, and he wasn't unaware of the slightly unhinged note in his voice as he said, "You know what the fucked up thing is?"

She tilted her head, a movement he'd seen her do thousand times before and had spent years memorizing. "What?"

He pinned his eyes to the ceiling and prodded at his lip until it started bleeding again. "I'm not in love with you, either."

.x.

Rachel held the ice-pack to Finn's eye, careful not to put too much pressure, and didn't answer as he spoke. "…_believe_ they'd lie to me like that, Puck was supposed to be my _friend_…"

Her first instinct had been to go to Finn, as the boys had launched at each other, but only because she was afraid that Puck might kill him. Puck was stronger than Finn, and generally more violent. He had a history of fighting and competency that Finn, for all his sweet smiles and dopey kindness, didn't.

She startled when he reached up suddenly and grabbed her wrist, prying it gently from his face and tugging her down onto his lap. He was looking at her intently, nearly but not quite nervous, and then leaned in and kissed her with such firmness that she jumped before settling into it.

For the first time, there were no strings: no Quinn, no baby, nothing.

It was … nice, she supposed. Slow, sweet, and earnest, with an air of _finally_ floating around both of them.

Rachel pulled away, keeping her eyes closed as an image of Puck leaning over her, smirking as he said _you were just _mine_, okay? _Finn faltered when she opened her eyes and smiled at him. "What's… what's wrong?"

She shook her head. This was her dream, and Noah Puckerman didn't get to ruin high school for her a second time. "Nothing," she said, kissing him again. "No, Finn, there's nothing wrong."

.x.

It was all over school by Wednesday: Finn Hudson was dating Rachel Berry. They'd been spotted holding hands, sitting together at lunch, and—OMG—_kissing_ during fourth free.

Puck didn't care. He was totally fine with it. It's not like he'd had feelings for that Rachel chick _anyway._

Except…

Well, he had just gotten _used_ to her, was all. He'd gotten used to the way she laughed, and the way she rolled her eyes, and those crazy big words she used because she was a psychopath. He'd gotten used to her annoying habit of humming whenever she was, like, breathing, and how he had to contort himself like he was a from the fucking _circus_ just to fit inside her car.

He'd gotten used to the way that she fit against him, tiny and perfect, and the way her hand always went to his cheek when she kissed him. He'd gotten used to the ticklish spot on her side that always made her squeal and squirm underneath him, and the way she kept her eyes closed for just a second after they kissed.

After school, she called from her house and told him not to come over. Finn was going to help watch the JCC kids today, so it was probably best that he didn't show up.

"Yeah," he said into the phone, though something that was definitely _not_ jealousy bloomed in his stomach, because that was _his_ thing, not Finn's. "Sure. Okay."

He settled back on the bleachers and stared out at the football field. Quinn leaned her head against his shoulder and thought about how long he'd wanted her to do just that, and when she sighed and said, "Maybe I shouldn't have told him," he shook his head.

"I'm glad you did," he told her honestly, even though it meant that everything else in his life had gone to shit. "I want to be a part of, like, the baby."

Quinn giggled, but her voice was fond. "Finn wanted to name it _Drizzle._"

Puck shook his head. "He probably still does, secretly," he said, and Quinn sighed.

.x.

Finn was a little out of his league at her house. She tried to set the kids up watching TV but they were fascinated with their new toy and wanted to know _everything_ about him, how hold he was and what he liked to do and did he want to be their boyfriend and where was Puck?

"Puck's sick," Rachel lied easily. "He couldn't make it today."

One of the boys sighed. "He was going to teach me how to throw today," he grumbled.

"I could teach you," Finn said earnestly, smiling. "I'm the quarterback at school."

They went outside and Rachel watched from the piano; Finn was patient and kind and earnest with the kids, and he didn't tease them like Puck did, didn't goad them like Puck did, but he didn't make them laugh like Puck did, either.

At the end of the night, he kissed her sweetly and promised to call later, and she knew that he would.

As the boy he'd played catch with headed outside to his mother's car, he said, "I liked that guy."

"Yeah," Rachel agreed with a small smile, "I do, as well."

He shrugged. "I like Puck better, though. He's funny. When's he coming back?"

Rachel was saved from answering by the boy's mother. Either way, she wasn't sure she would have been able to say the words _I don't know_ around the lump in her throat.


	8. myself

**Author's Notes:** I wanted them to be angstier for longer, but I couldn't make myself do it.

Set Myself on Fire

_In retrospect, maybe we did this backwards._

**eight: myself**

Finn always called when he said he would; he showed up five minutes early for dates; for that matter, he actually _took her on dates._ Her Dads loved him: he was polite, funny, and genuine, and he treated her like she was made of glass.

But Rachel… wasn't. She didn't mind the holding doors or the occasional footing of the bill, but she thought that whole idea of the man taking care of the woman old-fashioned and somewhat chauvinistic. She didn't _need_ a guiding hand on her back or someone to carry her books or the possessive way he held her hand.

They were things that she'd always _wanted_, things she assumed indicated that he loved her, and they were cute, at first. But after a while, Rachel found herself begging to pay for dinner and refusing to let him walk her to class.

"Hey," Finn said finally, just outside her math room, "are you mad at me or something?"

Rachel sighed, and shook her head, kissing his cheek quickly because she was still getting used to that being an okay thing for her to do. "No, of course not. I just… I don't need you to _do_ things for me all the time. I'm perfectly capable of opening doors for myself."

Finn frowned. "I don't understand," he said, bringing a hand up to scratch the back of his neck. "Quinn loved that kind of thing." They both looked at one another for a moment, not saying anything, and then Finn said quickly, "God, Rachel, I'm sorry. That just… came out."

She shook her head and managed a smile. "No, it's okay. You had a very long-term relationship with Quinn and your breakup was very recent. I think that's sort of the problem, Finn… I'm not Quinn. I don't like the same things that she does. We aren't all the same, you know."

He grinned, sheepishly, and she kissed him again. "I'm not mad," she said again. "It's really all right."

As she went inside, she couldn't help but think that things hadn't been this _hard_, with Puck.

.x.

He got used to avoiding Rachel in the halls. He figured it would just be easier for both of them; Puck was an asshole, but he knew when he'd fucked up, and he'd really screwed the pooch on this one, as his mother would say.

And anyway, though he'd never say it out loud, it sucked out loud seeing Rachel with Finn. She was quieter, reigning herself in all the time, trying to be little miss perfect for him when the real Rachel was way cooler. Sure, she was batshit crazy, but it was cute, in a terrifying sort of way.

The first couple of weeks, he and Quinn were ostracized at glee; it was like the others formed a protective circle around Finn and Rachel and he and Quinn just sat to themselves, talking loudly to prove that they didn't give a shit.

But Quinn had taken his hand, and her knuckles were white from gripping it so hard.

Matt and Mike had been the first to forgive; guys just didn't hold grudges like girls did, and when Mike had offered him his Gatorade at practice and Matt high-fived him after a tackle, Puck knew the drama was over.

Quinn liked to watch the Cheerios practice from the bleachers, and he'd gone over during the break to give her a baseball cap.

She frowned at it. "What's this for?"

"Wear it," he said, not meeting her eyes. "So you don't, like, overheat and kill the baby."

She'd laughed, and rolled her eyes. "You're such an _idiot,_" she said fondly. "Go back to practice."

"Will you just wear the damn hat?" he demanded.

She'd quirked an eyebrow and then sighed, jamming it over her head and folding her arms over her chest. "There now. Are you happy?"

He shrugged, because yeah, he was. He didn't want his baby girl coming out like a mutant freak because Quinn had gotten sunburned while she was pregnant. As he'd jogged back to the water cooler, Brittany had turned to Santana and said, "That's _adorable_," and he grinned, because he knew that glee that afternoon they'd be back where they were supposed to be.

And because he was never wrong, they were.

.x.

"Okay," Kurt said, putting his hands on his hips and blocking Puck's escape route, "Sit the fuck down, because we are going to talk whether you like it or _not_, Romeo."

Puck sighed. There was no arguing with Kurt when he got like this. "I already have a date to the prom," he said flatly, but there was no bite in his words.

Kurt rolled his eyes. "STFU. I wouldn't have asked you _anyway_, I mean, no offense but you _definitely_ are not the type to bring home to meet the parents, and I think it's important that the first boyfriend my Dad meets is the upstanding type. Maybe someone who likes golf. Or investment banking. Whatever."

Puck raised his eyebrows, because yeah, he really didn't care what kind of boy Kurt wanted to take home to Daddy.

"Point?"

"Keep your pants on, cowboy. Okay. Here's what I'm gonna say, and then we're gonna just be done with it, all right? All right. You're just a big pile of stupid most of the time, Puckerman, you really are. You tamed the beast that is Rachel Berry and then gave her up for the comparatively sane Quinn Fabray? Honey, that makes you John Gosselin and _nobody_ wants to be John Gosselin."

Puck frowned. "Did you just call Quinn _sane_?" he asked, blinking. "I'm sorry, are we talking about the same girl?"

Kurt rolled his eyes and sighed like Puck was _the_ stupidest person he'd ever met. "Oh, sure, on the _outside_, maybe. But secretly, Quinn wants nothing more than a nice boy who will hold doors for her and treat her like she's the queen she thinks she is. I mean, relatively speaking, she's practically a poodle. And Rachel is…"

"A Doberman," Puck agreed dryly.

Kurt shrugged. "I'm just saying—that girl would kill you, me, and the rest of glee to get her hands on an Emmy. Or a Grammy. Or an Oscar. Whatever, pick your awards ceremony."

Puck laughed, genuine, because yeah, that pretty much summed up Rachel. Kurt cocked his head, and then stuck out a hand. "Anyway, drama over. I'd say we could hug, but I know you subscribe to the idea that homosexuality is somehow contagious, so. I'll settle."

He took the offered hand, and then grinned. "You can look, but don't touch, Hummel."

Kurt rolled his eyes. "And you call _me_ a diva," he said, and then flounced out.

.x.

Artie always made Puck nervous; he had this way of speaking that gave life-or-death importance to even the simplest of statements. Puck had a feeling that Artie could say, "Pass the cereal," and make it sound like "I have to cauterize the wound."

He was the only one who hadn't forgiven-and-forgotten, so Puck waited for him after glee and grabbed the handles of his wheelchair to keep him from escaping. Artie said, "I've been meaning to talk to you," and it sounded like _I have to say this now, in case I never get the chance again._

"Um, yeah," Puck said. "Me too."

Artie wheeled around to face him and folded his arms over his chest. "Ultimately, who put his doodle in Quinn's poodle isn't really my business, but I had to choose a side." _I never wanted it to end up like this. But I have no control over Destiny._

"I figured. We cool now?"

"Pretty much." _Trust takes years to build, and seconds to destroy. I am willing to walk that path with you, if you are willing to walk it with me._

"Race you down the hall."

"I'm going to crush you like Chuck Norris crushes hills when he walks upon them." _I'm going to crush you like Chuck Norris crushes hills when he walks upon them._

Artie won.

.x.

On Wednesday, Rachel cornered him in the kitchen and said fiercely, "You can't tell Finn about us."

He raised his eyebrows. "Berry, even if I wanted to, I can't get within sixteen feet of the guy." She backed off, biting her lip and nodding, and turned to go back into the living room. Puck wasn't sure what happened; but it had been the first time that she'd really _spoken_ to him in the past few weeks and the thought of letting her leave made his fingers itch. There was only one really tried-and-true way of getting a rise out of Rachel, so he said, "And anyway, it's not like he'd care."

She stopped and turned back around to face him. "What is that supposed to mean?"

Puck shrugged. _Shut up_, he told himself. _Shut the fuck up, Noah Puckerman._

But the words came out anyway. "He's using you, Rachel. He got burned by Quinn and he's bugging about the baby and you never say no."

She stared at him, jaw going slack, and for a single, strong second Puck actually hated himself. He didn't see the smack coming until her hand was on his cheek, and she was breathing so hard that he thought she was going to hyperventilate. "I guess you'd know about using people," she hissed.

He shrugged. "I never pretended to be anything that I wasn't," he told her, honestly enough. "And don't try to pretend like you weren't thinking of Finn every time."

She said, "God, you are such an _ass_," and her voice trembled, and when she wouldn't meet his eyes he knew that he'd made her cry.

She turned and left him there and Puck jammed his hands in his pockets when he realized they were shaking.

.x.

Puck went with Quinn to her next doctor's appointment, and when the creepy, handsy, weirdly short man said the little girl was healthy, she cried. He knelt by the gurney-esque bed and asked, panicked, "What's wrong? What's wrong?"

She shook her head. "Finn … Finn loved looking at the pictures," she said softly after a minute. "The big idiot was so psyched to be a Dad."

It had stopped hurting to hear her talk about Finn, and instead Puck grinned. "He probably would have spoiled little Drizzlet rotten," he said.

"We're not calling her that," Quinn told him sharply.

He just grinned.

On the drive back to school, Quinn leaned her head against the cool window and asked, "So, you're into Berry now, huh."

He kept his eyes on the road. "It's not important."

She smiled. "For what it's worth, I think you'd be good for each other."

"I'm not good for anybody," he said, before he could stop himself, and the soft hand Quinn laid on his arm nearly made him swerve off the road.

At the stoplight, he tapped a thumb against his steering wheel and tried not to let his inner Kurt get the best of him. But there was no arguing with Kurt, so he blurted, "They look happy together, though, don't they? I mean, they both got what they wanted, didn't they?"

She raised her eyebrows. "Wow. She really fucked you up." When he didn't answer, she said, "Yeah. They look happy."

.x.

They _were _happy, more or less.

Finn was everything she wanted—sweet, thoughtful, affectionate.

It was Rachel that was the problem.

.x.

When Rachel opened the door on Sunday morning, the last person she expected to find on her stoop was Quinn Fabray. Her blonde hair was covering half her face and she was toying nervously with the hem on her dress; when Rachel opened the door she startled like a deer.

Rachel eyed her warily. "Quinn? Is there something wrong?"

Her laugh was drier and more tired than usual, but when she put her hands on her hips and cocked her head to the side, it was still Quinn. "Just about everything," she said. "Can I come in?"

To be honest, Rachel was somewhat hesitant, but it was rude to leave a pregnant girl on your stoop so she stepped to the side and let her in. They went into the kitchen and Quinn hoisted herself with some trouble onto the counter. "I'm just going to say this," she said without preamble, not quite meeting Rachel's eyes. "And I'm hoping that saying it quickly will make it less degrading, but given my current situation, it's not like I could lose _more_ respect."

Rachel hesitated. "…Okay?"

Quinn took a deep breath. "Look. Whatever it might seem like, I love Finn. He's… he's perfect, for me. I'm used to getting what I want and I need someone that doesn't know better than to find quality endearing. I'm a bitch on the best of days and I need Finn because he balances me out and keeps me from turning into, like, Regina George or something."

Rachel folded her arms across her chest. "So, do you want me to give him back or something?"

Quinn shook her head, almost frantically, meeting her eyes at last. "No. No. God, no, I think I've messed that kid up enough. He didn't deserve… he _doesn't_ deserve… he's an idiot, but I love him, you know?"

Rachel nodded. He _was_ kind of an idiot.

Quinn looked at her hands and mumbled, "God, what am I _doing_?" before taking a shaky breath and saying, "The point is, I'm… I've been trying to be, like, a nicer person. For the baby. I don't know if that shit, like, rubs off or something, but I don't want to take the risk that Drizzle won't get adopted just because her mom was spoiled."

Rachel was tempted to tell her that she wasn't sure that sort of thing could be detected at such a young age, but she stayed quiet. She figured that Quinn was like Puck: emotional confessions were few and far between, and when they came you had to just let them happen at their own pace.

"So what I'm saying is … I'm sorry. I'm so sorry, Ber—Rachel. Rachel. I'm sorry for tormenting you and making fun of you and posting all those nasty comments on your Myspace, because really, you have a great voice. I'd like to say that I was jealous, because I think that would make you feel better, but actually you just made it easy. And anyway, Puck had this weird, like, claim on you and never let anyone else say anything about you so it was, like, extra forbidden and fun."

Rachel froze. "What… what do you mean, he had a _claim_ on me?"

Quinn rolled her eyes, lowering herself from the counter back to the floor. "God, between the two of you, I am seriously beginning to think that Finn and I are actually a functional couple," she said. "Rachel, you can't believe anything Puck says about emotion. He's either an idiot or lying. The less he says the more he cares."

"I don't understand."

She shrugged, moving to the door. "Think about what a well-adjusted person would do, and then basically do the opposite," she said, and let herself out.

.x.

They lost the game against McArthur, which wasn't a big surprise to anyone who'd ever seen the McKinley team play. So as far as the score went, there wasn't anything too exciting.

The only notable feature of the game was the second half, when one of McArthur's 5,000-pound gorillas ran Finn over. It went down pretty much like you'd expect a meeting between a 16-wheeler and a raccoon with no legs to go.

Puck didn't really remember moving from his position to Finn, but it must have happened because the next thing he knew he was standing behind him, arms crossed over his chest, and waiting for Finn to do something stupid and need back-up.

But Finn wasn't Puck, so he just laughed and shook it off and held his hand out to the guy. "Holy crap, man, you're like a _train_."

When he noticed Puck, he didn't say anything or even really look at him, but he gave a single, sharp nod of thanks.

.x.

Rachel was furious. No, she was _livid._ Incensed!

Her dads, who made a point of being huge meddling busybodies without any social life of their _own_, had taken to involving themselves in her life where they _clearly_ were uninvited.

"But you two have been getting along so well," Daddy said, folding his arms over his chest in confusion.

"And it would be rude to call an cancel," Dad agreed.

Rachel stomped her foot. Usually she wasn't prone to such childish outlets of her emotional frustration, but in the present incident she was afraid that if she didn't kick the floor she would kick something—or someone—else. "Well, we _haven't_ been getting along, _actually_," she informed them tensely. "Noah Puckerman is an absolutely _insufferable_ vagrant who doesn't consider anyone's feelings but his _own._"

Daddy raised his eyebrows and met Dad's eye with a little smile. "Well, you know she's angry when she starts sounding like your mother."

Rachel stomped her foot again and fled upstairs, shutting her door with a satisfying _slam._

.x.

What was the opposite of psyched? Unpsyched? Because that's what Puck was feeling. He had worked very hard to keep his mother from ever interacting with his school life. He'd even done a pretty good job of it.

And then stupid Rachel Berry had come along and messed everything up, like she usually did, and he was trapped in the house with a _very_ excited Sarah waiting for his execution.

That is, Shabbat.

Wow, glad his life didn't totally _suck_ all the time.

"Now remember, Noah," his mother said, smoothing Sarah's hair as the doorbell rang, "be polite."

"I'm always polite," he snapped, and then winced as she raised an eyebrow at him. "Okay. Sorry."

They had the dining room table set, which was weird because they _never_ used their dining room. It was all kitchen or couch, which Puck liked because he was definitely _not_ all about the formal setting.

It made it worse, somehow.

.x.

Dinner could probably have gone worse, Rachel decided. If would have been worse if, say, Sarah had lit herself on fire and then given somebody a hug.

She was seated—_of course_—across from Puck, so she had to spend the whole night staring down at her plate and pretending not to notice the way his absurdly long legs rested against hers.

At one point, her Dads asked him about the baby, and Rachel tried not to look up but she couldn't help it. He was focusing hard on the tablecloth, but a big grin bloomed across his face as he said, "The Drizzlet's healthy."

Puck's mother rolled her eyes. "That's what they're _calling her_," she stage-whispered, shuddering. "Poor girl."

It was the first time Rachel had ever actually wanted to laugh and cry at the same time. Laugh, because Finn—his hand laced with hers but his mind somewhere else—had told her about wanting to name the little girl Drizzle, because she would be perfect and nice like soft rain on a Sunday; cry, because when Puck said it sounded like the way he used to say, _Easy, killer_ when she cried at the end of a movie.

Damn him, anyway. He'd always been an immature miscreant, and Rachel had been foolish to think that he… that _they…_

She felt his knee bump hers and looked up, startled. Everyone was looking at her with patient expressions on their faces and Rachel panicked. "I'm sorry, I was thinking. What did I miss?"

.x.

The way her face relaxed when her Dad repeated the request for music did unwelcome things to Puck face. He was really uninterested in smiling, especially right now.

His mouth, unsurprisingly, ignored his opinion and did what it wanted, because Puck didn't take shit from anyone, not even himself.

She sat at the piano like she was ascending to a throne, and he slouched on the couch with his arms crossed over his chest. She was a few bars into 'For Good' when her Dad stopped her and said, "Hey, I've got a great idea. Puck, why don't you sing Finn's part?"

And yeah, he was going to _kill_ his mother later, because there was no way this shit was an accident.

"No, thanks," he said flatly.

His mother little smacked the back of his head and said, "_Noah_!"

He shrugged, shifting uncomfortably beneath her Glare of Death. "Sorry," he grumbled. "I just don't like show tunes."

"You could sing whatever you wanted," Rachel's Dads said together, and then laughed.

His mother clasped her hands to her chest. "Sing Neil Diamond, Noah. You know I love Neil Diamond."

He went to the piano. "On second thought, Broadway sounds good," he said, not meeting Rachel's eyes. "Music's in the chair."

She stood and then sunk to her knees, tipping the chair's lid open and shifting through the music. Which was fine, until Puck remember that _crap, that's were I put the—_

Her hands stilled, and her eyes flicked up to his. Slowly, she pulled out a small stack of loose-leaf papers with her own neat scrawl all over them in perfect square pockets. Things like, _louder here, you have to __feel__ it!_ and _doesn't Jonathan Groff's voice remind you of Donny Marks?_ "You kept these?" she asked, voice soft in a way that made him feel like he was in a Patrick Dempsey movie.

He shrugged. "Whatever," he said. "Can we just get this over with?"

She didn't look at him while they sang. Well, maybe she did, but he wouldn't have known because he was way too busy looking _anywhere else._

His mother cried, because she got emotional like someone was paying her for it, and Rachel's Dads both beamed at her and said she'd really improved her range. (That was the root of the problem, Puck thought. People needed to stop telling Rachel she was cool all the time. She started to believe it, and worse, other people did too.)

When everyone over thirty and under twelve went back to the kitchen, Rachel asked quietly, "Could we talk, for a second?"

Puck sighed. What was with girls and talking? A healthy dose of sullen silence never hurt anybody. In fact, Puck felt strongly that if all the countries in the world just didn't talk to each other, there'd never be any war. It'd solve all the problems if we just stopped talking about feelings all the time, because feelings were what fucked everything up in the first place.

Still, Rachel was Rachel, and when she asked_ could we talk_, she meant _we're going to talk._ So he jerked his head and they went upstairs in tense, awkward silence. When they got into his room, he closed the door and snapped, "All right, what do you want?"

She kept her back turned to him. "You kept all the music," she said, wonderingly, like this was some grand romantic gesture. Which it was _not._ He just … liked the way the music looked, all marked up by her precise writing. What, was he not allowed to appreciate _art_ now without it having some deeper meaning?

"Don't make a big deal out of it," he said gruffly. "It's not like I've been pining for you or anything."

She turned then, and she was smiling a little. "You're not a very good liar."

.x.

Her heart had stopped beating, for just a second, when she'd caught sight of the music, stacked neatly in the corner and turned upside down like someone hadn't been able to look at them but couldn't throw them away, either.

Rachel studied Puck now, leaning faux-casually against his door with his arms folded tightly across his chest, like he was holding himself back. She couldn't get Quinn's voice out of her head: _Think of what a well-adjusted person would do, and then basically do the opposite._

He glared at her as if it would keep her on the other side of the room. "I'm an excellent liar," he said, but didn't deny it. "Can we be done now?"

She sighed. Obviously Puck couldn't be dealt with like he was a rational human being that she in any way understood. He couldn't be dealt with like he was Finn. She had to think of what a well-adjusted person would do, and then do the opposite. _Think, Rachel._

She shrugged. "Fine. If you're too much of a coward to man up and deal with this, we might as well just drop it."

He bristled, pushing himself off the wall. "I'm not a coward," he said darkly.

"But you're too scared to tell me how you feel?"

"I'm not _scared_, I'm just not _Finn._" He sneered. "But I guess that was the problem to begin with, wasn't it?"

Rachel refrained from punching him in the face for being so _utterly_ stupid, and instead took a deep breath and said, "There you go, turning it back on me again. You can't do it, can you? You're too scared to just say—"

She wasn't really sure what happened next; one second she was goading him and then next he was so close that she would have fallen over if he hadn't been gripping her shoulders.

.x.

Yep. That was it. He was sick of his bullshit.

He took three steps and grabbed her shoulders, voice coming out the closest thing you can get to a shout when you're whispering, because she was just _so annoying_ and pushy and never just _let it go._

He had made her life miserable for two years because every time she looked at him he was reminded what a piece of shit he was. She was going places and he was going to be stuck in the same fucking town for the rest of his life playing odd couple with Quinn, who, by the way, was a lot less hot once you'd got her. He'd had a best friend and then fucked up and lost him, he'd had Rachel but fucked up and lost her, but all in all, he still had his family and he had Drizzle and he had Quinn, in a Chandler-Rachel kind of way, except that he didn't want to be Chandler in this metaphor because Chandler was a fucking _tool._

…And holy shit, he was making _Friends_ references now. He was going to destroy Kurt Hummel from the inside out. From. the inside. _out._

And Rachel was insane, absolute, full blown _crazy_. Seriously, the girl _ironed her underwear_, like who the fuck does that? But she just had this way of looking at him and smiling at him and _knowing_ him that he just … he liked, okay, was that some sort of crime?

That's what he meant to say, but what came out was, "What do you want me to say, huh? That I _miss _you or something? Fine. Okay. I miss you. You think that I don't know that you're the best thing that could happen to a Lima loser like me? Come on, Berry, I'm not Artie but I'm not _completely_ retarded."

Rachel kissed him.

.x.

Don't ask _her._ Rachel had long stopped trying to understand anything about her relationship with Noah Puckerman. All _she_ knew was something warm had started in her heart when he said _I miss you_ and spread through her until she didn't know what else to do with it but share.

.x.

A big part of him said _crap, Finn_ and a bigger part of him said _shut the fuck up._ Puck had never once refused a woman, and he wasn't about to start now.

Her freakishly small hands were on his face and around his neck and he wrapped his arms around her middle and hoisted her up so that her toes were barely grazing the floor. There were a thousand things that he wanted to do—he wanted to carry her the four steps to his bed and lock his door and—

But he didn't.

Puck was an uncommunicative asshole, and he wasn't great when it came to relationships of any sort with anybody, but he wasn't completely stupid. He knew when something was on loan and when it was for keeps, and Rachel Berry might have been in his house in his room in his _arms _for that moment, but she wasn't going to stay there.

And, no homo, he wanted to savor it. He didn't want to scare her away, didn't want to startle her out of whatever crazy mindfuck she'd warped herself into, because he liked the way her arms tightened on him and her legs came up to wrap around his waist.

She pulled away and he loosened his arms, letting her drop back to the floor.

.x.

Rachel took a deep breath and several steps toward the window. Clearly she could not be trusted within kissing distance.

"I apologize," she said, and for the first time felt her vocabulary as heavy and uncomfortable. "I don't… I mean…"

He raised his eyebrows at her. "We've got to work on that impulse thing," he said.

She laughed, helplessly, and buried her head in her hands. "Finn is perfect," she said, desperately. "He's—he's sweet and—and he holds doors." It sounded sort of empty when she said it out loud, and Rachel winced. "That didn't… oh, _fuck._"

Puck started, his eyes going wide, and suddenly he started laughing, which Rachel did _not_ appreciate. Still, she couldn't help but grin sheepishly when he said, "You said _fuck_! Way to go, Berry!"

"It's not funny," she grumbled. "Profanity is the resort of the uneducated."

And she didn't know why, but somehow she knew that everything was going to somehow, eventually, figured itself out when he threw himself down in his desk chair, arms and legs sprawled out like the huge slob that he was, and said: "…Your _face_ is the resort of the uneducated."

Rachel threw a sock at him and laughed.


	9. on

**Author's Notes: **So, this chapter was fun. And it's the second-to-last. AHH.

Set Myself on Fire

_Just two lost souls, swimming in a fish bowl._

**nine: on**

On Monday, he opened the door and Rachel was standing on his porch with her fist raised like she was about to knock. She had a rose in her free hand and thrust it awkwardly at him when he asked her what the hell she was doing at his house at seven-thirty in the morning.

"I thought I might give you a ride, and, you know, this flower, as an offer of friendship," she said, so casually that it was awkward. "I know that if I wait too long you'll lose your present mood of caring and sharing and we need to talk about some things before the issue goes stale."

Puck sighed. "First of all, I'm disturbed that you saw a pink rose and thought of me," he grumbled. "And secondly, are you sure you don't want to just attack me with your lips again? 'Cause that's sort of like talking, but way more fun."

She leveled him with an embarrassed glare and said primly, "That was … an unfortunate slip, for which I take full responsibility, but I'll ask you not to bring it up with Finn, or—or anyone else, for that matter."

He rolled his eyes and got into her car. It was clean; no CDs, no Q-Tips, no laundry bag. He shifted positions a couple of times to try and get used to it. Rachel seemed to understand because she offered a sheepish smile. "I was afraid of what Finn might think if he saw it the way it was. I'm still not used to it yet. Everything feels …"

"Like Kurt in a football uniform," Puck agreed. "Seriously, Berry, this is freaking me out. Where are you storing all the crazy if it's not in here?"

Without taking her eyes off the road, Rachel reached out and punched him in the arm. "You're such a child. And _don't _say that my face is a child," she added darkly as he opened his mouth.

He grinned at her and raised his hands as if to say, _who, me?_

She took a deep breath, a general Rachel Berry indication that she was about to talk for the next hour and a half, and he steeled himself for the extreme zoning out he'd have to do. "I just wanted to tell you," she said, slowly, keeping her eyes firmly on the road, "that… I miss you, too."

When she was silent for several minutes, he raised an eyebrow. "Is that it?" he asked, amused. "You came to my house an hour early because you wanted to say that you missed me?"

She shook her head, biting her lip in a way that had always driven him crazy. "I just don't … I don't know what to _do_ about you, Noah. You are utterly unreliable, emotionally unavailable, and maladjusted. You ignore at least fifty percent of what I say. And—and you do things like impregnate your best friend's girlfriend and then lie about it. But, for reasons that I cannot now, nor do I ever, expect to be able to understand, I find myself strangely drawn to you. Despite all outward appearances, you're probably the person who knows me the best." She hesitated. "And I can't … I can't fully be myself with Finn, because I spend all my time trying to impress him, or at least be as good a person as he is, because he's so sincere and genuine and I'm…" she trailed off.

Puck didn't meet her eyes, but he gave a sympathetic shrug. "You're an ambitious woman who'd gladly cut out his eyes for a Grammy."

"Maybe not his _eyes_," Rachel protested weakly. "I'd absolutely draw the line at the arms."

"Ahh, she has jokes."

They smiled at one another and then Rachel sighed. "I don't understand you, Noah Puckerman. Not at all."

He raised his eyebrows. "You don't understand _me_? Berry, you iron your _underwear._"

Rachel pulled into the parking lot and shot him a nasty glare. "How else am I supposed to ensure that it's unwrinkled?"

"Who _cares_ if your _underwear_ is wrinkled? The only thing it's good for is getting ripped off and thrown on the floor, anyway!"

"You're such a … a nymphomaniac!"

"Says the girl who can't keep her lips to herself?"

"_Shhh!_"

Puck rolled his eyes. "We're in your _car_, Berry, who exactly do you think is listening in?"

"Well, you never _know_, Noah. The paparazzi are _everywhere._"

.x.

He and Quinn had taken to eating lunch at the glee table. At first he'd thought it was sort of gay, but then he got to kind of enjoy listening to Kurt and Mercedes bicker about who was more fabulous, and watching Artie surreptitiously steal food from Tina's plate when she wasn't looking. Then he'd sit back and enjoy the moment when she finally realized that her sandwich and all its sides were gone and shouted, "W-w-w-what the _fuck_? Who—who—how did all th-th—where the fuck is my sandwich?"

Finn had taken to sitting back with the football players during the big blowout, and Rachel tended to split her time between there and glee. But today they both came over, Finn clutching his tray like it was a shield, and since Santana, who was Googling origins of the word _sex_ on her Blackberry, had taken his customary spot between Puck and Mike, he settled himself on the other side of the table beside Matt. Everyone went sort of still for a second, and then Rachel said (too loudly; that girl had _zero_ tact), "So, did you guys hear that they were making a second _Dr. Horrible's Sing-a-long Blog_?"

Artie raised his eyebrows. "That movie was epic." (_Such tales of love and woe have never before been documented._)

Kurt clutched a hand to his chest and sighed. "Ah, Neil. He's hot, he's well dressed, _and_ he once played the part of Toby in a tour of _Sweeney Todd_. I mean, _marry_ me!"

Conversation resumed; Puck pretty much zoned out, because talking about how hot a gay dude was just wasn't really his six-pack of beer. Beneath the table, Quinn's hand gripped his so hard that it actually hurt; she was staring down at her plate with an intensity that would have looked more natural on Rachel.

Quinn cleared out fifteen minutes before the bell and didn't meet anyone's eyes as she went. Puck waited by the door as Finn walked Rachel to class and then pounced, grabbing him by the collar and dragging him out to the parking lot.

"Let _go_!" Finn snarled, flailing blindly. "Dude, this is my favorite shirt!"

"Easy, Kurt," Puck said, and then stepped back, folding his arm as Finn straightened himself out. "Sorry."

Finn looked up and rolled his eyes. "For what, messing up my shirt or knocking up my girlfriend?"

Puck shrugged, jamming his hands into his pockets. "Both, I guess," he muttered, and then sighed. Why did his best friend have to be such a God-damned _girl_? This shit would never happen with Mike. With Mike they could have just punched each other a couple of times and when they were too tired to do that, they'd have been friends again. But of course he'd had to choose the _one_ straight dude in Lima that was the descendent of a Care Bear. "Look, Finn. I'm not … good at this whole … talking thing."

Finn didn't say anything, but didn't knock him out, either, so he figured he was getting somewhere.

"This year has been, like … really fucked up. Last year, you dated Quinn and I pretended I didn't like her, and everything was really easy, you know? Simple. And then this glee shit happened, and all of a sudden you were Mr. Defender of the Weak or whatever, and Quinn and I just … commiserated."

After a moment, Finn said, "That's some seriously effed-up commiseration."

Puck rolled his eyes, because only _Finn_ would say 'eff' instead of 'fuck'. What were they, ten-year-old girls? "Yeah, well, it's not like you're friends with the most well adjusted people in the world," Puck pointed out. "I mean seriously, dude, do you know how _hard_ it is to be your friend? You're like everyone's favorite person. Standing next to you, I look like the douche-bag fiancé from _Wedding Crashers._"

"That didn't stop Quinn from liking you," Finn mumbled, and Puck sighed again, rubbing his hands over his eyes.

"Quinn doesn't care about me," he said flatly. "I mean, she does, but not like that. Look, Finn, she _chose you_, dude. I _offered_ to take responsibility for the Drizzlet, and she said no. She wanted you, because you'd be a better father than I'd ever be."

There was a long, long silence in which Puck figured Finn had to be formulating ways to kill him. He buried his hands back into his pockets and turned to walk away when Finn's voice stopped him. It was raw and cracking, and Puck was like, _shit_, seriously, now we're gonna have to _cry_? "What did you call her?"

He frowned, turning back around. "Call who?"

"The—the _baby_. What did you call the baby?"

Puck didn't meet his eyes. "The Drizzlet. Drizzle. Quinn keeps trying not to let me call her that, but she does it too when she's not paying attention. I thought … I mean, she's your daughter too, kinda, you know?"

Finn inhaled sharply, and Puck couldn't get away; he came at him with _everything_, and even though he struggled, Finn had surprising strength. So after a while, he stopped trying and just patted his back awkwardly as Finn hugged him and got his shirt all wet with tears like he was Quinn or something; seriously, between the two of them the Drizzlet was going to be a never-ending fountain of feelings.

"You're my best friend, Puck," Finn mumbled, and Puck sighed, because sometimes there was just no getting around the chick-flick moments with these people.

"You too, buddy," he muttered grudgingly. "You too."

.x.

When Puck and Finn stumbled into glee together, laughing breathlessly and smelling _very faintly_ of weed, everybody froze and then swarmed them, like they'd been waiting for this moment since the minute they'd broken up, so to speak. Rachel and Quinn held back, eyeing one another awkwardly.

Afterward, Finn hung back to talk to Quinn and Puck swept Rachel out of the practice room before she would think to spy.

"No one likes an eavesdropper, Berry."

"That's hardly true. Gossip mongers and tabloids _love_ eaves droppers." She hesitated, biting her lip, and then asked, "So what happened?"

He gave her an amused glance and leaned against her car's door. "What do you _think_ happened? I said sorry, he said okay. End of story."

For a long minute, she didn't say anything; instead, she climbed onto the hood of her car and put her head in her hands, looking calculatingly back at McKinley. "He's probably the best person that I know," she said after a while. "I just don't think … I'm worried that ... I mean, it's not that I don't _like_ him."

Puck shrugged, not looking at her. "Who doesn't? A popular jock with the heart of gold? That shit's straight out of the Brady Bunch."

"I don't think he really loves me all that much, either. I think he just … really wants to, because I'm highly attractive and extremely talented."

Puck laughed, looking at her fondly and shaking his head. He reached over to tug her hair. "Those are the only reasons _I_ like you," he teased, and she rolled her eyes, swatting him away.

"Shut up, they are not," she grumbled.

"Oh yeah? Why else, then?"

Rachel settled back against his windshield, looking up at the sky as it faded into dark, and said thoughtfully, "Well, I know you like that I'm Jewish, because it means your mother approves. And I know that you like that Sarah likes me. And you like that I'm a huge slob because you think it proves that I'm actually a human being and not a cyborg sent purely for the purposes of annoying you. And you like that I talk a lot, because it means you don't have to think a lot, since I know that hurts your head." She shot him a grin. "You like that my Dads like you, because they're probably the first parents that ever have. And you'll never admit this out loud, but you like that I'm the only person in the world who knows things about you that you're too embarrassed to tell anyone else—like that you used to want to be a magician and that you cried at the end of _Moulin_—"

He shut her up by clapping a hand over her mouth. "You said you would never mention it again!" he hissed, dragging her off the hood of the car to more properly clamp her mouth shut. She giggled, twisting out of his grasp and running round to the other side of the car. He levelled a warning finger at her. "You think I can't win at this game? You've done_ way_ more embarrassing shit than me."

She frowned. "That's not true."

"Oh, yeah? How about the time you made a Valentine for Donny Marks and wrote _I love you very much_ on the inside and it got posted on the bulletin board in the Wisemans' basement?"

She gasped, cheeks flaring with red. "Well—well you used to know all the steps to Brittany Spears' _Crazy_!"

"Only 'cause you made me learn them! And anyway, don't pretend like you didn't dress up as her for Halloween when we were kids, because you totally did."

"…You remember that?"

"Of course I do, Berry, you were _hot_ in that little skirt."

"I was _twelve_!"

"So? You were _working_ those knee socks."

"Only because I had a crush on you!"

There was a long pause, in which both of them stared at one another and Rachel clapped a hand over her mouth; Puck's mouth was twitching in a way that indicated that he wanted to smile but was against it as a general rule. He looked at the ground and said, "Yeah, I know."

Rachel frowned. "You _know_?"

"Berry, you're a lot of things. Subtle is not one of them."

"But … why didn't you ever make fun of me, then?"

He looked up at her, then, meeting her eyes with a strange sort of determination she wasn't used to from him. Then he shrugged and said, "'Cause I liked you, too."

.x.

Rachel blinked at him like he had forty heads.

And Puck was like, seriously, they think that _I'm_ the clueless one?

"I don't understand," Rachel said.

"Not much to it, Berry. Boy meets girl. Boy hits age where girls don't have cooties. Boy faces odd desire to put hand up skirt."

Rachel frowned. She seemed to be thinking very hard about something, because her mouth was moving in a way that indicated she was talking to herself. "So... even though you liked me... you were mean to me?"

He shrugged. It made sense to him. Letting a girl know that you liked her was like handing them a mallet and your heart and saying, "Here ya go, enjoy!" Puck had learned that lesson fairly early on and he never forgot it. "Please don't make this a big deal," he said with a sigh. "Seriously, Berry. I'm not looking to have an Oprah Winfrey moment, here."

"Quinn said you had a special claim on me, that no one else was allowed to tease me because you made it off-limits."

He shifted uncomfortably. He and Quinn were going to have a little talk about privacy and secrets, because _clearly _she didn't get the memo. "Can we not talk about this?"

"I_ want _to talk about it."

"Well, that makes one of us."

"Come _on,_ Noah."

"Look, what do you want from me, Berry? Yes. I was an asshole to you. I don't really see that changing any time in the near future. I had kind of a monopoly on Project Make Rachel Miserable because I'm clearly fucked in the head and I just... I don't like seeing anyone else fuck with you, okay? So direct your Care Bear Stare somewhere else."

She studied him silently, and for a moment he thought she was going to make him start talking again. He really had to stop enabling this habit of hers, because it was starting to make him a little crazy. But when she spoke, she didn't ask him to say anything else; instead, she snorted to herself, landed a punch on his arm, and said, "How do you know so much about Care Bears?"

He put her in a headlock and grumbled, "Shut up, Crazy."

_.x._

By the time Quinn and Finn emerged, Puck was pretty sure that he was going to be late getting home. He and Rachel were in her car, listening to Old Crow Medicine Show because it wasn't totally gay and Rachel liked the violin.

Quinn kissed Finn's cheek as they said goodbye, and basically everyone had tears in their eyes except Puck. He wasn't entirely sure why Rachel cried; something about being happy, she said, but that's retarded, because who cries when they're _happy_?

Rachel drove him home, because thanks to her spontaneous chauffeuring that morning he didn't have a ride. She sang along with the radio the whole ride home, so he stared out of the window and tried to adjust to the feeling of sitting in her car without a CD case cutting open his back.

When they got to the house, she left the car running and leaned over to kiss his cheek, quickly. He raised his eyebrows but didn't comment; he was all talked out for the day and wasn't looking to start up again.

When he got inside his mother asked, "Was that Rachel dropping you off?"

"Yeah."

"Such a nice girl. I always thought you'd be cute together."

He shrugged. "Yeah, well. Life doesn't always work out the way you want it to."

.x.

On Friday Finn picked her up at five and they went to see_ Paranormal Activity._ Which wound up being a mistake, because it turned out that Finn had an absolute _phobia_ of aliens that began with the movie _Independence Day_ and never left.

Rachel was driving them home and tried not to laugh as he clenched and unclenched his fists in the passenger seat. "Finn, if you knew it was going to frighten you, we didn't have to go see it!"

He shook his head. "You wanted to. I know you love all that weird stuff."

"Well, of course, but I could certainly have gone another time. The point of a date is that _both _parties have fun."

He was quiet for a minute and then asked, "What did you and Puck do? For fun?"

Rachel froze, her grip on the steering wheel tightening. She glanced at him but he was looking down at his hands. "Oh ... I ... How long have you known?"

"Pretty much since the news about Drizzle's real father came out. At first I just thought it was cool, how upset you were for me, but ... no one's that angry about someone else's problem."

She nodded carefully. All things considered, he was taking it rather well. "I'm sorry," she told him, sincerely. "I should have told you. I guess I just ... I didn't want hurt your feelings."

Finn shrugged. "I was kind of mad, at first," he admitted, looking out the window. "But it's not like you guys were dating or anything, and I was with Quinn at the time, so..."

_It's not like you guys were dating or anything_.How many times had she heard _that_? From Puck, from her fathers, from herself.

Frankly, Rachel was sick of other people telling her how she felt.

"You should know that I really liked him," she blurted, before she could think to stop herself. When he glanced over at her, alarmed, she sighed. "Puck and I have this incredibly long, complicated history, and I don't think that... I mean, I never really got over it." She bit her lip. Finn was still watching her, waiting patiently, and Rachel was verbose on the best of days but not even_ she_ knew where the words came from. "He's hard to understand, you know, because he never just _tells_ you anything. And he can be such an _ass_, just_ such _an ass, but there's this whole other side to him. You've seen how protective he gets. It's ... I don't like to be taken care of, but it's a nice feeling, knowing that he cares that much. And he has this. _huge_ capacity to love, but he's so afraid of it all the time, and I.x.I _like_ being the one he drops the act for. I like that I know him so well, that he's willing to be himself around me, the bad _and_ the good. Like he trusts me enough to cut through the charade. And ... there's this feeling, the one that you get when he just_ looks_ at you, like he wants something but he's too afraid to ask for it. Do you know what I'm talking about?"

"I get that look from Quinn sometimes," he said hesitantly, and she smiled sadly at him.

They drove in silence until they reached his house and sat idling in the driveway until he said, "I guess ... it's good that we found each other, then," he said, cautiously, looking at her only from his peripheral. "Since they were both so messed up, and we can ... not be."

"Yeah," she echoed, but they didn't look at each other, and she didn't kiss him goodnight.

.x.

By the time she realized what had happened, she was already on the porch, puzzling over why her key didn't fit in the lock.

When it opened without her help and Sarah leaped at her like a monkey from a cage, she staggered back and realized that she didn't live at number four.

"HELLO!" Sarah shrieked. "What are you here for? A visit? Did you come to see Puck? Puck's in his room, I'll call for him: PUCK! PUCK YOU HAVE A VISITOR." The girl frowned and stepped back, scrutinizing Rachel with a terrifying kind of bluntness. "You look pretty. Where you a date? Wait! Are you here _for_ a date? ARE YOU DATING MY BROTHER?"

"No," Rachel said frantically, wanting to clap her hand over Sarah's mouth but refraining it because it was rude and she was a guest. "No, I'm just on my way back home and I..x.I remembered that I have Puck's ... er ... Chemistry book."

"I've been looking for that," Puck said, emerging from the stairs and sweeping Sarah up onto his shoulders as she shrieked delightedly.

.x.

"Put me _down_!" Sarah squealed, beating at him with her fists, and he grinned, flipping her upside down so that her hair brushed the floor.

"What's the magic word?"

"_Please._"

"Nope. I'll give you a hint: I'm this and you're not."

"Umm. A boy?"

"Negative. Another hint: people don't mess with this."

Sarah squirmed and tried to punch his ankles, but he held her deftly away from him. "I'm not gonna _say it_," she said sourly. "It's a _swear._"

"Nah it's not. It's an adjective."

She crossed her arms over her chest, looking kind of like an annoyed monkey, and grumbled. "_Fine_. You're a _badass._"

Puck grinned, spinning her right-side-up and putting her back on her feet, ruffling her hair. "Very good. Ten points for Gryffindor. Now get out of here, Dumbledore."

Sarah stamped her foot and shouted, "Dumbledore's an old _man_!" before turning on her heel and running back upstairs.

Puck shrugged. Yeah, well, with the exception of her annoying habit of shouting when it wasn't necessary, Sarah was an old man at heart, so he guessed the description still fit.

Rachel was staring at him. He raised his eyebrow. "So... Chemistry book?" he asked. "It's cute that you think I'm going to use it, but whatever, I can sell it to a freshman."

She turned without a word and walked back to her car, and he followed her, bewildered. She didn't have to be so sketchy about giving him a book. It was just like Rachel to think that sort of thing was important. When they got to her car, she turned and looked at him, arms folded over her chest like she was shackled. "Uh ... earth to Berry," he said, waving a hand in front of her. "Hello? Anybody in.x."

He didn't get any more out, because suddenly she was kissing him, and not just kissing him but _kissing him_, with her hands fisted in his collar and her whole little body pressed against his, mouth moving furiously like she was trying to speak but didn't know how.

Puck stumbled, startled by the sudden assault, and automatically struck a hand out against the car to balance. She leaned into him, a small whimper spilling out of her throat, and before he knew what he was doing his free hand was lowering down her side, to the hem of her skirt, and then...

He pulled away, panting, clasping his hands behind his back because he obviously had no control over them whatsoever.

She didn't look at him, just slumped against her car and took several deep breaths before threading her fingers through her hair.

"So, uh," Puck said. "It looked like a Chemistry book, talked like a Chemistry book, but was definitely _not _a Chemistry book."

She laughed, so he allowed a small smile, and waited until she raised her head to look at him. "I'm sorry," she said, and sighed. "I didn't ... I didn't even mean to come here tonight, I just, um..." she gestured wordlessly, which he took to mean _I'm freaking the hell out_.

He shrugged. "You look nice," he said, to distract her. "Where were you?"

Rachel buried her face in her hands. "I was on a _date_, God, I'm a terrible person, to come straight from him to you, I didn't even _mean to_, I thought I was _home._ What does that mean, do you think? That I came here but I thought that I was home?"

That was a question that Puck was not prepared to explore, because it meant all sorts of things that, frankly, made him want to shit himself, so he said instead, "You've just had a lot on your mind lately."

She started nodding, but then stopped, and shook her head. "No," she said carefully. "No. That's not it. It's not. I thought ... I talked to Finn tonight, because he knows about us, and ... and all of a sudden I started talking about how it used to be with us, do you remember? When Finn was still with Quinn and we were ... it was easy. It was so much easier with you because you know me, even the bad parts that I try to keep hidden, and I know _you_, even the good parts that _you_ keep hidden, and ... oh my God, Puck, I think ... I think I might be.x."

He shut her up by dragging her to him and kissing her (how easy to fall into the old habit), because if they were making out then she couldn't say what he thought she was about to say and mess everything up.

She let him kiss her and when he pulled away, she just _looked_ at him, hand still on his cheek, and then murmured, "Thank you."

Whether she was thanking him for the kiss or for not letting her speak, he didn't know. He shrugged, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear, and murmured, "Go home, Berry. I'll see you Monday."

She went, and he walked back inside.

The next morning, his Chemistry book was slipped inside his mailbox.

.x.

Mike called on Saturday and invited him to Santana's parents' house. They were out of town and Santana was having a party, and Puck accepted because he liked beer and not having to think about anything.

.x.

When Brittany called and invited her to Santana's for a party, Rachel choked on her cereal.

"This is Rachel Berry," she said into the phone.

Brittany paused. "Um... yeah... I know. So are you coming?"

Rachel took a moment to understand that Brittany hadn't dialed the wrong number, and then said, "Oh. Uh. Yes, thank you?"

And that was that.

.x.

Rachel wasn't sure what she was supposed to wear to this type of party; when she'd called Brittany to inquire as to whether it was casual, casual-formal, formal, or super-formal, Brittany had just laughed and said her jokes were getting better and way more believable.

Which left Rachel in the position of having _no idea_ what to do.

She couldn't call Finn, because she didn't want him to know what a loser she really was, and she couldn't call Puck because the last time she'd seen him she'd almost .x. _God_ .x. said that she _loved him_, which was unacceptable for so _many_ different reasons, so in desperation she dialed the one person she knew could help.

"Hello. I need you. It's a clothing emergency."

"Speak no more. I'm already there."

.x.

Actually, it took him fifteen minutes, but given the distance between their houses Rachel determined that there had to have been some speeding going on, which she strongly disapproved of.

Kurt threw open her closet doors and examined what hung there with a critical eye. "No, no, _definitely_ no ... that looks like it came right out of a Brittany Spears video, which is _not_ a compliment given what we've seen her in lately ... too formal ... too _casual_ ... we need something that says, 'I'm here and I'm fabulous, so hold onto your boyfriends, you skanky-ass cereal sluts.'"

Rachel frowned. "Um, are you sure that's what we want it to say?" she asked. "What if it just said something like, 'I'm normal and not crazy'?"

Kurt cast her a disparaging glance and said, "Well, we don't want to _lie_, Rachel. Now are you going to let me turn you into a fierce, heartbreaking diva or are you going to hinder my creative genius?"

She tried to determine whether that was offensive and then sunk back onto her bed, sighing. "Just don't turn me into Beyoncé," she grumbled, and Kurt laughed.

"Oh, honey, I love you, but even _I'm_ not that good."

.x.

When Kurt was finished, even Rachel's dads raised their eyebrows.

"That's, um ... kind of a tight top there, Rach," Daddy said.

Kurt rolled his eyes. "No tighter than spandex. She looks like a superstar, Misters Berry."

"Don't get any tattoos," they called after her as she followed Kurt to his car.

"Or piercings!"

.x.

By the time Puck rolled up at Santana's, the party was already well under way; some of the football team and the Cheerios had sequestered themselves in the yard, refusing to talk to anybody else, but he just gave them a wave and kept walking. Inside, most of the gleeks had _somehow_ managed to present themselves as socially acceptable: Tina was sitting on Artie's lap and letting him wheel her around while Mercedes did her thing on the dance floor and Kurt exchanged shy but alarming glances with a kid that played the tuba in the marching band.

Quinn was sitting on the couch drinking water and watching _Bring It On_ with Brittany and Santana, and they had to drink anytime someone said the word 'cheer'. Mike had Matt in a headlock and they were wrestling over who was the better breakdancer (Mike, obviously; Matt sucked at everything).

Rachel was sitting on the arm of Finn's chair, legs crossed and a drink held in her hand. She was perched perfectly still, like a statue.

He stared. Was she ... _drunk_?

Finn looked up and met his eyes, and hurriedly got out of the chair. "She's been throwing them back like Santana all night," he murmured. "I mean, at first it was funny but ... can't people, like, die from too much alcohol?"

Puck frowned. "How much has she had?"

"I don't know, man. She keeps sneaking them when I'm not looking."

As if on cue, Rachel stumbled into them and then frowned like it was their fault. "Hello," she said, and Puck waited for the inevitable flow of unstoppable Rachel Berry Word Vomit. But she didn't say anything, just stood there and stared at him like she was trying to burn a hole in his forehead.

"Um, hey, Berry," he greeted. "Having fun?"

"Possibly."

Finn sighed. "Maybe she's tired? We should get her home."

Puck tried to imagine the looks on her fathers' faces if their little girl came back home smelling like booze and unable to formulate sentences. He shook his head. "No way, man, her parents would kill her. Can't you take her to your place?"

Rachel was still watching the two of them intently, eyes narrowed in evaluation.

Finn shook his head. "I can't drive. I've had a few, and I'm not a great driver anyway."

He sighed, looking longingly at the pack of beer sitting on Santanta's counter. Of course Rachel would ruin the one fun night of the week. "Fine," he grumbled, "I'll take her, but seriously, next time I'm leaving her ass here."

Finn's grin had something behind it that Puck didn't recognize, and he said, "No you won't."

"Yeah, well," Puck muttered, "I'll want to. All right, Berry, let's go."

She frowned at him. "Where?"

"My house."

"Why?"

The one word answers were kind of freaking him out. "Because I've got your Chemistry book and I think you'll need it for your text next week."

She hesitated, then slowly set down her drink and nodded once. "Okay."

He rolled his eyes and they walked back outside; when she stumbled he grabbed her hand and didn't let it go until she was buckled in.

.x.

She hadn't meant to drink but she was nervous alcohol was supposed to make people less awkward but she just felt more awkward by the way why had Puck been late, hmm, had he done that on purpose just to mess with her because she didn't like it, she'd been waiting all night to prove to him that she wouldn't be crazy and now he was here driving her home because she _was_ crazy.

She liked the way he held her hand and the way he kept glancing at her to make sure she was okay and oh, crap. She was going to vomit.

...No. Okay false alarm, she just had to hiccup but those two things felt remarkably similar. Puck put on _Spring Awakening_ as they drove because he couldn't drive without music and he knew she liked Broadway, he was always doing things like that because he liked her, she knew he did, she could see it all the time, Noah Puckerman was totally in love with her and she didn't know what she was doing with Finn.

They got to his house and he took her hand again, sneaking in through the back.

Stairs were harder than she remembered.

.x.

He somehow managed to get her upstairs and into his bed; she dragged him down with her and then curled up automatically against him and didn't say anything. He figured she'd probably fallen asleep or passed out or both, so he reached out to his bedside table and grabbed his Gameboy, because he didn't care how lame it was, he fucking _loved_ Tetris.

.x.

Rachel woke up curled around Puck, his arm secured behind her back and a Gameboy somehow lodged between their faces. She shifted, pulling it out and setting it to the side, and took a moment to look at him in the dark.

After a few moments, he grinned and said, "Take a picture, stalker."

She huffed, slapping him lightly. Her head still felt kind of light. "Thank you for taking care of me," she murmured gently, and he shrugged.

"Whatever. Go back to sleep, 'm tired."

She tucked her head under his chin and he tightened his hold on her; he smelled like his truck and her perfume and she closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She thought she was falling asleep, but then she heard her voice ask, "Why didn't you tell me about Drizzle?"

He sighed. "Can we not?" he asked. "It's like four A.M. and I had you haul your drunk ass all the way up here."

"Is it because you don't trust me? Is that it?"

"No, Berry. That's not it."

"Then what? Didn't you know?"

"I knew. Go to sleep."

"_Puck._"

He sighed again, rubbing a tired hand over his eyes and looking at the ceiling. "Look. You were the only person in this stupid town that didn't look at me like I was a Lima loser, okay? I didn't want to prove you wrong."

Something warm spread in the pit of Rachel's stomach and she shifted closer to him. "Are you in love with Quinn?"

.x.

He considered getting up and leaving her there, but something stopped him. He couldn't make himself move, not with the way she had a death grip on him that was getting dangerously close to cuddling.

He looked at the ceiling and tried to sound convincing when he said, "I'm not in love with anybody."

Rachel just smiled, and Puck let himself grin a little because he'd never been all that good at lying to her, anyway. "I don't believe you," she whispered, and pulled his head down to kiss him. "I don't believe you at all."

He kissed her forehead. "You're going to be hungover," he murmured.

She smiled against him. "Your face is going to be hungover," she said, and then giggled sleepily. "I love that joke. It reminds me of you."

He closed his eyes and didn't answer, just fell asleep to the sound of her breathing.


	10. fire

**Author's Notes:** Umm, so.

This is the end. I really don't know what to say except that it's been an incredible ride, you guys, and thank you all so much for the incredible feedback you've given me. This has been seriously THE most fun story to write, and I'm so sad that it's over! I cannot thank everyone who reviewed—you guys have been so incredible and I just want you all to be my best friends forever.

So with no further ado, I hope this lives up to all your expectations!

Set Myself on Fire

_The shadow proves the sunhine._

**ten: fire.**

Puck woke up to the scent of pancakes. (That should have been the first indication that Something Was Up in the Puckerman household; his mother _never_ cooked.)

When the scent took hold and he realized it wasn't a dream, he sat up straight in bed. At the same time, his door slammed open and Sarah came hurtling in, leaping at him like some freak chimpanzee on 'roids (which he'd always kind of suspected she was).

"ARE YOU SMELLING WHAT I'M SMELLING?" she demanded, shaking him.

He frowned. "That's real?" he asked, jaw dropping. "That's ... _there are pancakes downstairs_?"

He was on his feet before he could think about it, Sarah clambering onto his back. "I think someone must have broken in," she said, in total seriousness. "There's no other explanation, unless aliens replaced Mom with some kind of a drone." She paused and then leaped at him. "HOLY CRAP ALIENS REPLACED MOM WITH SOME KIND OF A DRONE."

He rolled his eyes and hefted her into a more comfortable position. "It's not aliens," he said flatly. "...It's obviously robots."

Her grip tightened on him as they started down the stairs and she rested her chin on his shoulder. "Robots? That's just stupid."

"Yeah, because _aliens_ are a totally legit theory."

She was in the process of punching him in the arm when they reached the kitchen, and then both siblings promptly shut up because what the _hell_ was Rachel Berry doing in their kitchen cooking breakfast?

"'Morning," she greeted cheerfully without turning around. "I woke up with a headache and for whatever reason absolutely _craving_ pancakes, so ..."

Too many words.

Once they'd assessed the situation and assured themselves that the food was neither an alien takeover nor a robotic ploy to win their love, he and Sarah hurled themselves at the table, shoveling down pancakes like it was a race (and it totally was, and Puck was totally dominating). Rachel watched them with a stunned lilt of her head and then shrugged, reaching over Puck's shoulder to smack his hand away from Sarah's plate when he tried to swipe one of her hash-browns. "Get your own," she said firmly.

After a few moments of food-induced tunnel vision, he felt a nudge against his leg. When he looked up, Sarah was glowering at Rachel in disgust, and when he turned to check it out he understood why.

She was putting syrup on her pancakes_._

Before she could ruin the golden brown disc of beautiful perfection, he snatched the bottle out of her hands and scolded, "_No_, Berry. _No._ Not in _my_ house."

She frowned, staring at him like he was about to attack, and honestly, if she'd tried that shit again, he might have. Sarah sighed heavily and rolled her eyes as Rachel asked bewilderedly, "What is the _matter_ with you?"

"In this house, we put _peanut butter_ on our pancakes," Sarah explained, slowly and carefully. "It's a Puckerman family TRADITION."

Rachel frowned. "But... I'm not a Puckerman," she said.

Puck and Sarah shared a look. "P-house, P-rules," they said at the same time, and Puck tossed the syrup into the trash can. He set the jar in front of her and she reached for it cautiously before spreading a thin layer of peanut butter across the pancake.

She hesitated, then took a bite, and then smiled.

Which turned out to be the solution Puck had been dreaming of all his life: after all, not even Rachel Berry could speak with her mouth glued shut.

.x.

Puck drove her home and walked her to the door; he offered to come in with her in case her fathers were displeased with the late hour of her arrival, but she assured him that they wouldn't mind, since she'd already called this morning and explained that she had fallen asleep at Santana's and would be home promptly.

He raised his eyebrows at her. "Lying to your dads? I'm so proud."

She rolled her eyes, shoving him lightly so that he fell back onto the first step. "Well, I considered telling them not to worry because I'd spent the night with _you_, but I figured that would probably have an averse affect."

He made a dismissive sound and shrugged. "Whatever, your Dads love me. I'm like the Jew boy they never had but always secretly wanted 'cause you turned out so bad."

"Bad_ly._"

"You're correcting my insults now?"

She shrugged. "Antagonism is no excuse for poor grammar."

She left him on the stoop and went inside, greeting her dads with a kiss on the cheek. Rachel showered quickly, and took an hour to decide what to wear; she had no idea what the proper attire for this kind of thing was, but this time she would figure it out on her own.

She called Finn.

.x.

When Puck got back to his house, Quinn was waiting on the front steps, arms crossed over her growing belly. He smiled as she lifted her head out of her hands. Before he could say anything, she stood up and kissed him once, quickly but firmly, on the mouth.

"That was a thank-you," she said, somewhat breathlessly, and then kissed him again before screwing up her face like she was about to take a shot of something nasty. "And that was an I'm sorry."

He frowned warily. "What are you sorry for?" he asked cautiously, not entirely sure that he wanted to know.

"I've been thinking," Quinn murmured, "and I know how much you want to keep this baby, but I'm not changing my mind. I'm putting it up for adoption and you have to accept that because I see you looking at me sometimes like you think I might ... that this _baby_ might ... she can't be ours, do you understand that?"

"But she _could_ be," he said quickly, "she _could_ be, we just have to—"

"No," she interrupted. "That's what I'm trying to tell you. I'm not keeping it. I'm _not_. And before you start yelling at me, I have an idea."

"We're not giving our baby girl to the psycho school nurse," he said flatly. "I don't care if I have to kidnap the Drizzlet and move to Canada, there is no_ way_ I'm letting that wildebeest get her claws into my baby."

Quinn shook her head. "No. That's what I was going to say. I was thinking that we could just tell Mr. Schue the truth about his terrifying wife and give Driz... give the baby to just _him_."

Puck hesitated.

On the one hand, he wanted this baby. He'd always wanted her, from the beginning, from the first second Finn had looked at him and murmured _Quinn's pregnant._ He loved the Drizzlet, even if right now she looked like this ugly little mutant freak that maybe had some fingers. And even if he did everything else wrong, he'd always get the loving part right.

But Quinn was saying no, and as his mother constantly reminded him, he couldn't exactly take care of Drizzle without her. He couldn't be a single dad. He wasn't even sure he had the financial security to be a not-single dad.

And furthermore, he definitely didn't want to marry Quinn. She was great, but they'd sort of run that course already.

After a moment, he sighed and said, "Man, I just _know_ somebody's gonna cry."

.x.

Rachel felt that it went fairly well, all things considered.

Finn showed up promptly at three, grinning and asking what was so urgent. He'd just showered, so he had that fresh scent about him, and when Rachel brought him into the kitchen he started snacking on nuts.

She'd written the speech out over thirty-two index cards, but she'd only gotten through the first fifteen when Finn stopped her. "Um, Rachel, are you ... breaking up with me?"

She sighed, looking tearfully at her hands. "Well... yes," she muttered. "Oh, Finn. I cannot begin to tell you how very sorry I am about this whole thing, I feel like I've been leading you on for weeks now and that's absolutely unacceptable behavior."

He nodded, tossing another peanut into his mouth. "So ... is it Puck?"

She nodded miserably. "I'm sure that's a blow, too, especially considering what happened with Quinn."

"You know," he said thoughtfully, scratching a spot on his chin, "I guess I sort of saw this coming. You're a really great girl, Rachel, and I like you a lot, but you're a little ... umm ... intense."

Rachel threw her arms around him. "I'm so glad to hear you say that. Well, I mean, no, of course I'm not thrilled that despite my many attempts to dampen down my high-maintenance personality, I'm still too intense for one of my best friends, but--"

Finn grinned, pulling back to look at her. "First of all, don't make your personality damp, and secondly ... I'm one of your best friends?" he asked, and she blushed.

"I mean, if that's okay with you," she mumbled, pulling away. "I don't want to overstep my bounds."

"No," he laughed, and pulled her into another quick hug. "No, not at all. You're one of my best friends, too. I just don't really want to make out with you anymore, is all." He paused, and then added, "Oh, and one more thing. I know Puck's a jerk who makes a point not to have feelings or show emotion, but if you break his heart I'll probably have to, like, slushy you or something, and I really don't want to do that because I know how difficult it is for you to wash out of your hair."

Rachel smiled.

.x.

After they told him, Mr. Schue was quiet for a really long time. Then he got up and left the room and didn't come back to school for a week and a half.

Artie ran glee rehearsals, because no one can say no to a kid in a wheelchair, particularly not someone like Artie, who could politely remind them that, "Practice makes perfect," and make it sound like _One does not simply walk into Mordor._

.x.

Three weeks before Regionals, Mr. Schue showed up at Quinn's doorstep and said, "If you're sure this is what you want, then I'd be honored to adopt Drizzle."

Quinn said, "Could ... could her middle name be Fabray? Maybe?"

Mr. Schue nodded, and Puck assumed there were tears.

.x.

No one really asked Mr. Schue what was happening with the wildebeest, but it spread pretty quickly that they were getting a divorce. Puck wasn't sure he'd ever seen Mrs. Pillsbury so happy or Coach Tenaka so depressed; either way, not his business.

Everyone knew that Finn and Rachel had broken up, which put him in kind of an awkward place with Rachel because he wasn't sure if she wanted him to like make a move or something. (He wasn't entirely sure that he wanted to. He knew this time it would be for the long haul, and Puck had ... never really done that before.)

Anyway, basically what he did was nothing.

.x.

They were sitting in her backyard. The JCC midgets had gone home and Puck was lingering for no real reason other than he had nowhere else to be. Somehow her head ended up on his shoulder and after a while he stopped contributing to the conversation and just let Rachel ramble on.

He had no idea what she was talking about half of the time, but he didn't mind listening.

.x.

On Tina's birthday glee met for dinner in the bowling alley. They played teams, and Rachel chose Quinn because Brittany had already chosen Santana and she wasn't sure if anyone else would and she didn't want Puck to.

"I'm really bad at bowling," Quinn admitted as they went to get their shoes, and Rachel shrugged.

"That's all right. I'm excellent, because my Dads and I used to go every weekend and play on a father-daughter team, so I'll be able to make up whatever points you cost us."

A year ago, Quinn would have given her a look of disgust or rolled her eyes or even insulted her general parentage, but now she just shook her head and laughed.

"Of course you can," she said.

.x.

No one really understood how _Artie and Kurt_, of all people, could have won.

Kurt clinked his Big Gulp against Artie's and said, "That's what they get for oppressing us, I suppose."

.x.

Afterwards, Puck drove Rachel home. He spent half the time wondering out loud how he got beat by a gimp and a gay, and she spent the other half bitching that she'd had _formal training_ and Kurt just got lucky because he had a natural sway to his hips.

By the time they'd reached her doorstep, they mutually agreed that it was total bullshit and they were going to demand a rematch in which they would team up and surely kick minority ass.

"I oppose the phrasing of that statement," Rachel said as she reached for the door handle.

Puck shrugged. "I oppose your opposition," he said. "I win."

She frowned at her, hand stilled on the door. "You can't just oppose my opposition and declare it a win!" she cried, glaring at him. "That's not how debate works!"

"We aren't debating, Berry. I'm just winning."

"That is absolutely untrue. You have yet to assemble a remotely reasonable argument, and in fact, I'm not even sure what the point of contention in this conversation is!"

"Well, I'm not sure what point of contention _means_, so that makes us even."

She sighed and hopped out of the truck. He waited until she waved at him from the porch before driving away.

.x.

Rachel's thought was this: Puck was an emotionally closed-off human being, not given to commitment or relationships, so she had to ease him into it. And she was completely happy adhering to a 5-tiered plan to win him over until she went to the final football game of the season and sat behind Sally Jordan (who had lost quite a bit of weight of the course of the year) and heard her say, "Mmm-_mm._ Do you _see_ what Puck Puckerman's got going on under his jersey?"

Her friend laughed. "No, but I sure want to."

Sally leaned in. "I'm going to go find him after the game. Who knows? By this time tomorrow I might be able to tell you."

In hindsight, Rachel would call what happened next panicking.

.x.

They won, which was a big surprise given just how bad the team was, so the locker room was loud and raucous after the game. Puck had just gotten out of the shower and was standing in his towel when the hoots started, and he turned to find Rachel walking toward him with a determined stride that made him both hot and nervous.

"Um, Berry, this is the _boys'_--"

But he didn't get a chance to finish, because suddenly she was kissing him, her hands on either side of his face and pressing herself closer, and he was a dude so his thoughts defaulted at _sex._ He didn't really know what to do, so he just kissed her back, and let himself snake his arms around her and stay there.

He thought maybe this was one of those weird Rachel moments and soon she'd pull away and freak out, but she didn't, she just ... kept going until the catcalls fell silent and it got kind of awkward.

When they ran out of breath, she pulled back and said fiercely, "Don't you dare even _think_ about going _near_ Sally Jordan, Noah Puckerman, don't you _dare_!"

"Berry," he said.

"Because I know we aren't dating or anything but I forgot to factor other girls into my five-step plan, so I'm not prepared to handle this situation, except to be completely up front with you and say that I hope, in the near future, to be a significant part of your life, but that's not going to happen if you have sex with Sally Jordan. Or anyone else. Oh my God, I forgot all about those ladies whose pools you clean, I mean,that _has_ to stop."

"Berry," he tried again.

"And I know that you aren't exactly Mr. Commitment, but I think that I've suffered enough for this, and frankly, I'm done waiting around for you to man up and realize that you love me, too, because I do, I love you--"

"_Rachel._"

She startled and then looked at him, clapping a hand over her mouth. "Oh, no, that was too soon, that was way too soon, you weren't ready to hear--"

He kissed her to shut her up and then said, "This isn't the best place for this conversation. Maybe we could talk later."

She nodded. "Yes. Um. Sorry. Carry on."

Then she turned and ran.

.x.

So, Puck was pretty confused up until he found Sally Jordan sprawled in the back of his truck wearing nothing but her underwear.

"Uhh, hi, Sally," he said, not looking at her because, well, he was a guy, and he could hardly be blamed for appreciating a naked girl sprawled willingly in the back of his car. "Now's not a good time."

She giggled, trailing a hand across his shoulder. "Oh, come on, Puck. Any time's a good time for you."

Puck closed his eyes. He knew he was going to regret this, but he couldn't make himself stop.

Old habits die hard.

.x.

Rachel was sitting in the music room when he found her. She wasn't crying, exactly, because Rachel had trained herself scrupulously not to cry in public places. Still, when the door opened and he walked in, she swiped at her cheeks and braced herself for the worst.

He sat wordlessly next to her and for a long time they didn't say anything. Then she murmured, "I'm sorry about the locker room. The whole point of the 5-tiered plan was to avoid that exact scenario, but I guess I just went crazy for a minute."

He laughed quietly. "Berry, your default setting is crazy."

She managed a smile, because teasing was good. Teasing meant that he wasn't going run away screaming, at least. She took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut so that she wouldn't have to look at him. "I wasn't lying, though. I do, um, love you, I mean, I think, because I've never been in love before, and I know that that probably freaks you out. But I freak you out anyway, so it's not that big of a change, right?"

He didn't say anything, so she slumped against the piano and looked at her hands and focused on not crying.

"So, Sally Jordan was just naked in my truck," he murmured, after she'd been stewing for so long that her hands were starting to shake.

She froze. A kind of horrified terror shot through her and then she climbed to her feet. "I see," she said. "Well. Okay."

She started moving toward the door when he grabbed her hand to stop her and asked, "Where are you going?"

Rachel didn't turn around. "Home. I'm going to rent a musical and sing along to remind myself that I'm extremely talented and then when we see each other tomorrow I'll be able to be your friend without--."

"Whoa, whoa, hold up. I just said she was naked, Berry, I didn't say we'd had sex."

Rachel's eyes widened and she spun to face him. He was wearing this wide, smug grin and she hit him as hard as she good on his chest. "Don't _do_ that!" she shrieked, bringing a hand back to hit him again.

He caught it on its way towards its target and laced their fingers. "Dude, seriously? You spend like 23 hours a day talking about things that don't make sense, and you want _me_ to be concise?"

She frowned and muttered sourly, "I didn't know you even knew what the word _concise_ meant."

He rolled his eyes at her and shook his head. "Look, Berry, I'm not good at this, and it takes a _lot_ for me to admit that. But I just turned down a more-than-half-naked babe offering herself to me in what might be my hottest fantasy, because I wanted to come hang out with you." He hesitated. "And ... and while I was asking her to put her clothes back on, I kept thinking _old habits die hard_, because... because doing stuff that I think would make you proud of me has become sort of a habit. So what I mean is that I--"

He was cut off by a squeal and her mouth as she threw herself against him, nearly knocking him over. He laughed against her lips and pulled away. "You didn't let me finish," he said, raising his eyebrows.

"You don't have to," she said fondly, bringing a hand up to cup his cheek. "I know what you were going to say."

(end)

.x.

**Epilogue**

They kicked ass at Regionals.

(real end)


End file.
